It was not to Lou Prophet’s credit that when faced with a surfeit of perplexing problems he often turned to whiskey and women.
The predicament of the ambush and of the marshal’s job he seemed to have been hornswoggled into accepting were certainly not going to be decided on their own. But after he’d finished breakfast, he told the German woman who ran the restaurant, by way of small talk, that he was heading over to the bathhouse for a hot dip.
She responded by inviting him to take a dip with her in the pantry she’d turned into a bathroom complete with big porcelain tub and a small stove with a copper boiler.
Her devilish smile set off fireworks in the large, brown eyes flicking across his wide chest. Cheeks flushed and damp, with wisps of cherry-red hair sticking to them, she said in stilted English, “I am closing until four this afternoon, and vy vaste vater, no?”
Never a man to argue with a woman’s good sense, Prophet followed the girl, whose name he learned was Frieda, granddaughter of the late Gertrude, into the pantry.
Waiting for the water to boil, they stripped and made love on their clothes, Prophet grunting bearlike between the girl’s spread knees, her ankles crossed on his back, her hands pulling at his hair.
When they finished, Frieda donned Prophet’s hat with a joyous trill, then poured a steaming bath tempered with cold water from the kitchen pump.
She tested the water with a toe, took Prophet’s hand, and in a minute they both stood in the tub. Prophet soaped Frieda from behind, massaging her large, pendulous breasts with slow strokes of the perfumed soap, gradually working his way down to her soft, slightly swollen belly, to her thighs ... and then the insides of the thighs to the silky nap between her legs.
She swooned back against him, so that he practically had to hold her up with one hand while he bathed her with the other, covering every inch of her big, smooth, hot body with the soap.
She reached above her head, moaning and caressing his jaws and clutching his shoulders as though clinging to a life raft in a raging, boiling sea.
“Goot enough for now. Now, my turn,” she said throatily, twisting around to him, taking the soap as she kissed him.
She opened her mouth, stuck her warm tongue between his lips, and lapped his teeth as she scrubbed his broad shoulder blades, hard as a smithy’s anvil. She kneaded the muscles with her knuckles and thumbs, pushing and grunting, her hands owning a bread baker’s strength.
Her pinching, probing, soothing hands worked down his back, then came around to his belly. She briefly stuck a finger into his belly button and tittered.
Then both hands were again caressing, moving higher to the stone like slabs of his chest. She pinched at the nipples and pressed the heels of her hands against the muscle tapering into the sloping, hub like shoulders.
Suddenly, she fell against him, nibbling his neck while her hands closed around his jutting tool, exploring like a blind person learning a hammer by touch. She worked him into a delirious, near-catatonic state, and when the last few rational cells in his brain realized they’d better sit before they fell, he drew her down with him into the water.
Quickly, she straddled him, or tried to. The tub was bigger than any he’d seen beyond San Francisco and St. Louis, but there wasn’t straddling room. She sat atop him, leaned back, and draped her feet over the sides. He grabbed her fleshy butt cheeks in both hands and drew her onto him. She made a noise that anyone passing the window might have misconstrued as a guttural cry of shock and horror as he plunged deep within her liquid, satin depths.
He pistoned her back and forth, up and down, between his raised knees. When they were finished, there was barely two gallons of water left in the tub.
“We made one hell of a mess on your floor there, Frieda,” he said when he’d caught his breath.
She was leaning back, as he was, against her end of the tub. Glancing at the floor, she said, “It vas vorth every drop!”
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Over two years.”
While they lounged, legs entwined, Prophet learned that Frieda was only twenty-four, but she’d been married twice, once before she’d come out West with her grandparents, and once after. The first husband, twenty years her senior, had killed himself during the stock market troubles of the early ’70s.
She’d met her second husband in Bitter Creek. A young farmer from north of town, he and Frieda had been married two months when he’d gotten drunk in the Mother Lode and gotten his throat cut by the shirttail cousin of a prominent Cheyenne businessman he’d played poker with.
Her grandparents had died of pneumonia last year, within two weeks of each other, leaving her alone to tend the restaurant.
“Lonely place for a pretty, needful young woman,” Prophet said wistfully. She was nibbling his ankle like a ham bone. “Ever thought of packin’ it in?”
She looked at him. “Pack it in?”
“You know—hightail it for higher ground? Leave?”
“I can’t leave,” she said as if he’d just suggested she turn cartwheels down Main Street. “My grandparents left me vith too many debts.”
Prophet shrugged. “Sell out. Let the buyer assume your debts.”
She looked at him slack-faced, as if wondering if he was being serious. “You don’t know much about Bitter Creek—do you, Lou?”
“I reckon not. And though I have a feelin’ it won’t be good for me, I got a bad itch to know.”
“If you vear that badge, take Mr. Crumb’s two hundred dollars, you vill know soon enough.”
He was about to ask her what she meant by that when hushed voices rose beyond the room’s single window, followed by the unmistakable rasp of a revolver being cocked.
Fifteen minutes ago, two riders rode into Bitter Creek from the south, wending their way between shanties and piles of split cordwood, scattering chickens and setting several dogs to barking.
One of the riders, Leo Embry, was tall and thin, in his early twenties, with a hard-jawed, expressionless face. A new, wide-brimmed, cream Stetson sat at a rakish angle atop his head.
Embry wore a yellow-and-red checked shirt and a silver-plated Remington low on his right hip, the holster thonged just above his thigh. The shirt, gun, and holster were new as well. Embry had bought the works in the Bitter Creek mercantile three months ago, when he’d decided to become a gunslick, like his first cousin, Pike Thorson.
The other rider was a kid in his mid-teens named Gaelin Murphy, an orphan who swamped out saloons and mucked out livery stalls for spare pocket jingle, meals, and an occasional place in which to throw down his army blanket.
He wore torn denims and a faded undershirt beneath a vest sewn from elk hide. A wool watch cap sat low on his freckled forehead, his corn-yellow hair poking out from underneath the cap, soft as goose down. Fine yellow whiskers ran down from his sideburns, thinning to nothing along his jaw. A sparse yellow mustache rode atop his mouth, barely visible until the sun hit it right, causing individual strands to glisten.
He wore a battered .38 in a soft leather holster flapping loose against his thigh. He kicked the ribs of his old nag, trying to keep up with the fine, broad-chested paint of his steely-eyed companion who rode taut-backed in his saddle, his right hand caressing the grips of his glistening .44.
Young Gaelin had ridden out to the little ten-cow ranch where Leo Embry worked with his uncles when he wasn’t practicing his fast draw against trash heap rats and vegetable tins. Gaelin had relayed to Embry the news of the Thorson-Mahoney Gang’s demise at the hand of a Rebel bounty hunter named Prophet.
Embry had been young Gaelin’s hero since the time, a few months back, when he’d watched Embry pistol-whip a braggy gambler behind the Mother Lode Saloon before sending the man, tied belly-down across his saddle, galloping out of town.
Now the two riders ducked under a clothesline, trotted through the wind-buffeting trash of a vacant lot, and reined to a halt on Main Street. The older of the two swung his hard expression up and down the street, squinting and rolling his eyes around in their sockets.
“He’d be in a saloon, no doubt,” the younger man said, keeping his voice low and serious, trying to sound as tough as his older companion looked.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Embry muttered self-importantly after a moment, raking his squinting gaze along the boardwalks.
It was midday, and farm and ranch wagons clattered along the wide, rutted Main Street, which was only three blocks long and intersected by two side streets. Horse-backers rode in twos and threes—drifters mostly, with a few ranch hands here and there, heading for the harness shop, feed store, or mercantile, on errands for their employers.
It was quiet by Bitter Creek’s night standards, but several sporting girls plied their scantily clad wares from saloon balconies. One—a toothless half-breed—stood on a street corner, flashing her bare breasts at passing riders, a few of whom hooted and yelled obscenities while others simply ignored her. “Mad Mary” had been working the same corner so long that she’d become invisible to all but strangers.
Young Gaelin Murphy stared at her, revulsion spoking his eyes and curling his thin upper lip.
Leo Embry reached out to swat his shoulder. “You get you a good eyeful, Gaelin, my boy,” he said with mocking humor. “You and her’ll be playin’ slap ’n’ tickle next month.”
The younger lad’s lip twitched as he stared. “I don’t want nothin’ to do with that buggy half-breed. Why, she’d curl the tail of a gut-wagon cur.”
“No?”
The older lad’s steely stare was fastened on the creature performing a macabre, half-clad two-step with an awning post. Opening her hide dress with one hand, she extended her other arm to two passing riders, hooking her fingers and cackling like a Halloween ghoul.
Strands of long, gray-black hair framed her wide, flat face and the breasts that hung to her belly, like water flasks, the nipples tilted toward her feet.
“I’ll admit she ain’t no Lillie Langtry, but limber your pecker up, boy,” Embry continued. “Every kid in the county has to give her a poke when he turns seventeen. Those are the rules. Course I threw my guts up afterwards and was pickin’ bugs from my crotch for the next two months, but by God, I did it!”
Somehow, he chuckled without smiling, only jerking his shoulders slightly and making soft snorting sounds. He reined his horse left up Main Street, around a two-seater buggy parked before the gunsmith shop.
Inwardly recoiling at the prospect of coupling with Mad Mary, but figuring if Embry did it, then by God he’d do it too, Gaelin gigged his nag after the handsome paint, tracing a path through the buckboards and mining drays. The riders shuttled their gazes from one side of the street to the other, then reined up before Hobbs’ Livery Stables and Feed Barn.
Embry turned to Gaelin, his expression grim. “No sign of the son of a bitch, eh?”
Gaelin shook his head. “Prob’ly in one of the whorehouses.”
“I’ll find him,” Embry said, leading his horse up the long ramp, through the barn’s gaping doors, and into the cool, dusky interior rife with animal smells.
Embry called into the shadows, down the central alley lined with three leather-topped buggies and several buckboards, tongues drooping to the hay-strewn, dung-littered floor. A figure stepped out of the shadows wielding a pitchfork—a fat youngster with freckles, deep-sunk eyes, and a shaved scalp. He wore tattered overalls over his fish-belly-white torso that boasted breasts the size of a chubby girl in her teens.
“Hey, Leo,” he said, running his admiring gaze up and down the young gunslick’s natty duds, letting his eyes linger on the Remington in Embry’s holster. He swallowed with emotion. “You gonna ... you gonna ... ?”
“You know what I’m here for, Fats,” Embry said coolly. “You seen the son of a bitch lately?”
Fats nodded. “’Bout an hour ago, I seen him headin’ for Gert’s. I told Richy Searls to give a coyote yell if he seen him leave, and I ain’t heard nothin’ so far…”
His expression all business, Embry dug in his pocket and flipped a nickel at Fats, who snapped it expertly out of the air and grinned.
“Unsaddle our horses and curry ’em good. Give ’em plenty of water and oats. I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Uh ... what about Mr. Crumb?”
Embry knew the mayor was out of town, but he said snidely, “Fuck Mr. Crumb.”
He turned, glanced at Gaelin meaningfully, then sauntered down the ramp, his thumbs hooked inside his cartridge belt.
“Be careful, Leo,” Fats called, holding the reins of Embry’s paint with one hand and tossing the nickel in the air with the other. “I mean, you heard what he did to the gang ... him and that girl...”
“Yeah, I heard what he done,” Embry grumbled, turning at the end of the ramp and heading down Main Street.
Gaelin hurried after him while holding his pistol against his thigh. Gaelin caught up to the older lad but had to jog every fourth step to keep up as Embry’s legs were several inches longer than the boy’s.
“What do you think, Embry? Can we take the son of a bitch?”
“My cousin went down,” Embry said tightly, staring straight ahead, chin down, the brim of his hat hiding his eyes. “I can take—” He jerked a look at the youngster. “What do you mean ‘we’?”
“I wanna help, Leo. I wanna be a famous gunman, just like you. I’ll play your back.”
“Play my... ?” Embry frowned, then sneered. “You mean, back my play.”
“Can I, Leo?”
Embry looked at the youngster critically, enjoying the kid’s admiring, beseeching gaze. He pretended to think about it.
Actually, he’d already made up his mind. He’d never faced a short-trigger man before, and a cold knot of fear tightened just above his belt buckle. He wouldn’t have admitted such a thing in a million years, but he liked the idea of having someone—even a snot-nosed brat with a rusty .38—back his play.
“I reckon you can tag along,” he said finally, nodding dully. “But stay behind me, and for chrissakes, don’t make any noise! I gotta warn you, though, it’s gonna be bloody.”
“Blood don’t bother me, Leo,” the kid said, one hand on his gun grips. “You won’t be sorry, Leo—I promise!”
Embry snorted and said nothing to his young partner, maintaining a hard expression as he and Gaelin approached the cafe.
Embry paused in the yard, scrutinizing the one-and-a-half-story clapboard-and-whitewashed structure with a few geraniums and yucca planted around the foundation, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully.
“What we gonna do? How we gonna play it?”
“Follow me and keep your mouth shut.”
They walked Indian-file around the south side of the building, ducking under two windows. At the cafe’s rear, Embry sidled up to the first sashed window and edged a quick look inside.
Turning to Gaelin standing behind him, back to the shack’s wall, he shook his head. He ducked under the window and, young Gaelin aping his every step and move, edged to the next window, on the other side of a small door.
Embry removed his hat, turned to the building, and edged his left eye across the frame and over the glass. Seeing two figures inside, he jerked his eye back behind the wall, took a deep, calming breath, and stole another look.
Inside the small room behind the foggy window glass, a small iron stove stood against the left wall, topped with a steaming copper kettle. Before the stove, two people sat facing each other in a big, porcelain tub.
Embry couldn’t see clearly because of the moisture, but the two appeared to be relaxing, heads thrown back on their shoulders. Squinting, he saw that one was the big bounty hunter; the other was Frieda Schwartzenberger.
Leo Embry snickered. His loins twitched. He’d always fantasized about rolling the big, sexy German woman, but whenever he’d tried flirting with her, she’d merely laughed and told him to come back when the green was off his horns.
His mouth tightened as jealousy now mixed with anger.
Rolling his glance away from the tub, Embry saw a pistol and cartridge belt hanging from a wall hook, to the left of and above a sawed-off shotgun and a Winchester ’73.
Embry turned to Gaelin, watching him nervously.
“Wait here,” he whispered. “Keep your head down so they don’t see you. When you hear me kick that inside door, you go in through there.” He gestured to the small back door leading into the pantry. “And for godsakes, watch where you aim that old blunderbuss of yours.”
“You got it, Embry.”
The older lad walked around to the front and entered the cafe by the main door. He walked through the tables upon which midday sunlight lay, washing in through the windows Frieda kept clean as crystal.
Pushing through the swinging door, he entered the kitchen, saw the skinned deer carcass hanging in the back, near a six-foot plank table, then stepped past the big black range to a door in the left wall. His nostrils twitched at the heavy smell of onions emanating from a stew pot simmering on the range.
Embry considered the door for a moment, feeling his heart thumping heavily, then quickly, his skin tingling. He took a deep breath and smiled, hearing his name tossed around the saloons that night. Soon, it would make it to Cheyenne and points north and south along the Burlington Northern Line. Everyone from lawmen to line girls would be kissing his butt shortly.
No more brush-popping calves and year-old heifers out at his uncle’s ten-cow spread north of the Buckskin Hills ... No, sir, no more of that bullshit for Leo Embry!
Eventually, high rollers would be calling for him... men who needed other men turned beneath the sod.
Eyes bright, lips pulled back from his teeth, barely able to choke down the gleeful chuckle rising in his chest, Embry lifted one of the tooled boots he was still paying for and kicked the door.
It slammed back against the wall as Embry rushed inside, gun extended. A sudden, inexplicable burning engulfed him.
“Ahhhhhhhhhh!” he screamed. His face, head, and shoulders burned as though he’d been dunked in an acid vat.
Looking down, he saw steaming water washing over the floorboards, soaking his boots. The skin of his scalp felt as though it were punctured by a million sharp pins. He stumbled forward, screaming and firing the Remington blindly, squeezing his eyes closed against the burn.
Naked and still wet from the bath, Lou Prophet watched from a kneeling position beside the stove. He held his cocked .45 in his right hand.
He’d heard the hushed voices outside the bathhouse window and seen the figures through the cracks between the vertical siding planks. Quickly but quietly, he and Frieda had slipped out of the tub. She’d retreated to the kitchen while he’d propped the boiling pot on the narrow shelf above the door, connecting its handle to the doorknob with twine he’d found in his jeans pocket.
Now he winced as his would-be attacker’s face turned the red of a Georgia sunset. The kid dropped his revolver, lifted his chin to the ceiling, and screamed.
Frieda appeared behind him, clad in a checked robe and wielding an iron fry pan. “Take that, you crazy pup!” she cried and swung the pan forward, connecting solidly with the back of the kid’s head.
Prophet winced as the young man fell face-forward on the wet puncheons, out like a blown candle.
The door to Prophet’s right opened suddenly. Prophet turned to see another kid, around sixteen, bolt forward with an old .38 held before him. Seeing his comatose partner on the other side of the tub, the kid froze and stared.
“Leo!” he screamed.
“Hold it right there, kid,” Prophet said, standing and bringing his .45 to bear on the youngster.
The kid turned to see the tall, naked bounty hunter standing before the stove. The kid’s eyes found the .45’s yawning maw.
His hand opened and his .38 dropped to the floorboards. The kid stumbled back, arms spread and eyes wide, as though he’d just stepped on a coiled rattler.
Then he stood there, shivering, face bleaching, staring at Prophet’s .45. Piss dribbled down his leg to puddle around the soles of his frayed brogans.
Prophet had just held up his left hand to calm the kid when the youngster gave another shrill cry, turned, and bolted out the door. Prophet stepped to the door and looked out. The kid was running straight out through the weeds behind the cafe, toward the willows and cottonwoods lining the distant ravine.
The kid ran hard, throwing his arms up high.
“Ja!” said Frieda, throwing her head back and cackling. “Look at him go!”