An hour later Prophet and Sergei reined their horses to a halt on the mine road.
Before them sat the mine’s dark gash in a high cliff face, chalky tailings tonguing below the entrance. On a slope far below sat what Prophet figured was the mine office — a barrack-like stone structure with a red tile roof. It was flanked by stables and a wagon shed as well as an enormous corral for the mules that pulled the big Murphy ore wagons to the stamping mill.
Wagons pounded down the switchbacks from the mine, contributing to the brassy dust hanging heavy in the scorched, dry air.
Mules brayed and blacksnakes popped. A couple of brindle hounds barked at the wagons. At a stone repair shop to Prophet’s right, a smithy reshaped a bent wheel rim while a mule skinner and a shotgun guard sipped coffee from tin cups and offered counsel.
Prophet gave Sergei a meaningful look, then gigged Mean and Ugly toward the office, turning to avoid a booming wagon and cussing mule skinner. As he and Sergei neared the office, Prophet saw the four bodyguards whose skulls he’d dusted last night sitting in a row of hide-bottom chairs on the porch, shaded by a tin-roofed awning.
They squinted out from under their hat brims as Prophet and the Russian approached the hitch rack. The guards looked none too happy to see Prophet, who grinned and nodded affably.
“Howdy, boys. Doin’ all right?”
“Buddy, you think you’re smart. Don’t get too smart,” warned the man Prophet had kicked in the balls.
“Who — me? I’m just a simple Georgia boy tryin’ to make a livin’.”
A few minutes later a runty clerk ushered Prophet and Sergei into Gay’s office at the building’s rear. Gay sat behind a big oak desk, smoking a hefty cigar and going over a ledger. His sleeves were rolled up his long, pale, knife-scarred arms.
“Who’s this?” he asked, regarding the Cossack disdainfully.
“Friend of mine,” Prophet said. “Met him on the trail over east. Can you use him, too, Mr. Gay? He’s short but a broad son of a bitch. Look at him.”
Gay studied the Russian, obviously impressed by his looks. “Can he fight like you?”
Prophet laughed. “Well, now, I wouldn’t say he can fight like me. Not many can. But he can hold his own in a Dodge City barn dance — I’ll give him that.” He glanced at Sergei, who flashed him an indignant look.
Gay walked around the desk, his cigar smoldering between his slender fingers. He stopped a foot away from Sergei, squinted into the Russian’s emotionless brown eyes. Sergei stood stiff-backed, tense as a private given the twice-over by a general.
“What’s your name?”
Prophet cleared his throat. “Uh — he don’t speak, sir. He’s mute. He can write, though. That’s how I found out his name is Dick.” If Gay heard Sergei’s accent, he might tie him to Marya.
“Dick?”
“Dick.”
“Dick what?”
“Uh, Dick Lubowski.”
“Lubowski.”
“Dick here — he’s been a bar bouncer and a bodyguard to several governors. Why, he even escorted an English prince West on a huntin’ trip. Saved the royal from a scalpin’ — held off twelve Injun bucks with nothin’ but a six-shooter and a bowie knife!”
Gay stared into the Cossack’s eyes, his nostrils twitching as though testing the air for the smell of dung.
“Mighty impressive credentials,” he grumbled, and poked the cigar back in his mouth for several thoughtful puffs, his cold eyes narrowing.
“He ain’t real smart, though,” Prophet added. He noted a slight flush rising in Sergei’s cheeks. “No, he ain’t a whip like me, but then we can’t all be good with our fists and smart.”
Gay’s eyes flickered toward Prophet, and a sneer yanked at his mouth. “He’s not as bright as you? What a pity.” Gay puffed the stogie. “Well, I haven’t seen him fight, but I’d like to see how well he takes a punch.”
Gay had barely finished the sentence before he pulled his arm back, making a fist, then swung it forward. Prophet winced and blinked. When he looked again, he saw the stubby, hairy fingers of the Cossack’s left hand wrapped around Gay’s wrist, Gay’s fist barely touching the Russian’s belly. Gay’s hand was turning pink. He gave a restrained yelp as he pulled back on the captured limb, shuffling to his right.
Prophet elbowed the Cossack. “That’s enough, Dick. I think he gets the point.”
A few minutes later, massaging his right hand with his left, Gay led Prophet and Sergei outside, where the four bodyguards were still sitting in a grim line on the porch.
“Harland, DeBocha — you’re fired,” Gay said crisply. “Clean your things out of your quarters and get the hell out of town.”
The four men looked at one another, then at their boss, dumbly. “Huh?” one of them grunted, outraged.
“You heard me. Scram! These men have won your jobs.”
“He surprised us last night, Boss!” said the guard with shaggy muttonchops and a white bandage around his head. His bib-front shirt was open to the thick matt of dun-colored hair on his chest. He wore an ivory-gripped Colt in a well-worn shoulder rig.
Gay wasn’t swayed in the least. “All the more reason for you to scram.” The outlaw bent over slightly at the waist. “Scram! Outta here! Go! Vamoose!”
Scowling with fury at Prophet and Sergei, the two men scuttled like two scolded dogs down the porch steps.
“Give your shotguns to these two,” Gay ordered, indicating Prophet and the Russian.
The men stopped, glanced at each other. The man with the muttonchops and shoulder rig tossed his shotgun to Prophet. With a curse, the other man — the man with his arm in a sling — tossed his two-bore to Sergei, who grabbed it with one hand. Then both men turned, untied their horses from the hitch rack, mounted up, and rode away cursing and shaking their heads, their faces aflame with malice.
Muttonchops hipped around in his saddle. Glaring at Prophet, he said, “You ain’t seen the last of us, you son of a bitch!”
He gigged his horse after the other man, and, passing an oar wagon, they galloped down the mountain trail, their dust sifting behind them.
“Well, then,” Gay said, snapping his jacket down and turning to the two bodyguards sitting in their chairs and eyeing their new colleagues skeptically. “Dwight Rosen, Mel Clark — meet Lou Pepper and Dick Lubowski.”
Prophet grinned at the two men, and pinched his hat brim. “Hidy-ho.”
The guards stared at him and Sergei with ill-concealed disdain.
The two new and the two veteran guards loitered around the mine office porch the rest of the day.
After supper at the Inn, Gay and the bodyguards rode up the mountain to the hacienda with its buffer of armed sentinels waving and nodding from the rocks along the mountain. When the phaeton had pulled up to the front patio, which was guarded by a beefy gent smoking a cigar and holding a shotgun, Gay climbed out of the buggy and turned to his four bodyguards.
“Clark, Rosen — show Pepper and Lubowski where they’ll be sleeping.” With that, Gay headed inside and promptly disappeared — either to Marya’s room or his office, Prophet assumed.
“You do it,” Rosen told Clark when Gay was out of hearing range. “I’m getting a drink.”
Clark cussed at his partner’s retreating back, then led Prophet and Sergei through a side entrance under a deep-set portico.
They swung down a dimly lit hall around the north side of the house. They skirted a graveled courtyard with a few benches with rotten wood and rusty iron frames, and a dry adobe fountain with dead leaves and sand piled around its base.
Clark stopped before a stout, wood door with chipped green paint and a tarnished brass latch. The door and five others faced the derelict courtyard that had probably been the sight of many Mexican fandangos in the house’s rich Mexican history before Gay and his outlaws had moved in and trashed the place.
“So poor ole Dick can’t talk, eh?” Clark asked conversationally, one hand on the door’s latch.
“You’d have a longer conversation with a barn wall than ole Dick here, God bless him,” Prophet said, cutting his eyes at Sergei, whose nostrils flared disdainfully.
“He lose his tongue to Injuns, or some pigtailed girl cut it out?” Clark asked with a mocking chuckle.
Prophet wagged his head. “You best be careful what you say about ole Dick. Just cause he can’t talk don’t mean he can’t cut loose with a haymaker that would shatter your jaw like china.”
They were clomping down the flagstones, spurs chinging. Clark stopped abruptly and turned to the Russian. He was an inch or so taller than Sergei. He puffed up his chest and gritted his teeth.
“Oh, yeah? You a tough guy, Dick?”
Sergei dully returned the man’s stare. Prophet watched uneasily, hoping the Russian didn’t forget himself and speak.
Sergei knew what the price of that would be, however. He maintained his composure. Clark broke the stare.
“Don’t seem all that tough to me,” he snarled, running his filthy sleeve across his mouth, turning, and continuing down the courtyard, chuckling. It seemed to make him feel better after what had happened last night and then Prophet and Sergei being rewarded for it with jobs.
The hardcase stopped and threw open a door. “This is it, boys. Home sweet home — for as long as you’re gonna be here, anyway.” He chuckled again with meaning. “Me and Rosen bunk in the next room there. When he ain’t upstairs with his little honey, Mr. Gay stays in that room yonder.” Clark gestured to a door just around a corner of the courtyard. A broken sculpture of a Spanish conquistador stood to the door’s left, chipped saber raised.
“Gay has a woman here?” Prophet asked, fashioning a curious frown.
“Sure he does. Always keeps at least one around. Sometimes two. He’s had as many as three in the house at a time, but it don’t work too well with this many men around, if n you get my drift.”
“Who’s the girl?”
“That, my friend,” Clark said, “is none of your business. She don’t wanna be here, though — he keeps her locked in a room upstairs — so if you see her tryin’ to sneak out, stop her. Those are orders straight from the boss hisself.”
Prophet sensed Sergei’s muscles tightening. Ignoring him, Prophet said, “I don’t reckon I care what Gay does with his women, as long as I get paid. . . .”
“That’s right,” Clark agreed. “Just do your job and keep your mouth shut. And you see any strangers around, shoot first and ask questions later. Someone tried sneakin’ in the other night.”
“That right?” Prophet asked, moving into the room and scraping a match alight on his pistol belt. “Bandits?”
“Prob’ly,” Clark said, nibbling his scarred upper lip. “There’s always someone out gunnin’ for Mr. Gay. But your main job is to guard him when he leaves the hacienda. Inside the house, he’s well protected by the other guards spread out across the mountain. But it never hurts to keep your ears pricked and your eyes skinned.”
“I s’pose a man like that has made a few enemies over the years,” Prophet speculated, touching the match to a candlewick.
“I reckon he has, but he pays well, and I like the digs here, so I don’t ask questions about it or even think about it much. I just keep one hand on my pistol butt and one eye on my backtrail, if n you know what I’m sayin. Well, I hope you boys are comfortable here.” Clark smiled without humor and left, leaving the door open behind him.
Sergei shoved the door closed and turned to Prophet, who threw out a hand, shushing the Russian while he listened at the door.
Confident Clark had drifted off, Prophet said, “Okay.”
“I cannot bear the thought of Gay . . . and Marya,” Sergei growled, turning and moving slowly, anxiously about the long, narrow room. “I cannot bear the thought of what he does . . . has been doing . . .”
“Well, he won’t be doin’ it for much longer,” Prophet promised. “I say we don’t waste any time tryin’ to spring her. As soon as everyone in the house has gone to bed, we head upstairs and nab her out of here.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Sergei eagerly agreed.
“Only problem is . . .” Prophet said, running a hand thoughtfully along his jaw, letting the sentence trail off.
“Is what?”
“Once we have her, how the hell do we
get past all these owlhoots?” “We will shoot our way, if we have to!” Prophet winced at the Russian’s foolhardy
zeal, but he allowed there were few other
answers. “I reckon. . . .”