With a gasp, the girl jerked her head toward the door.
A man stood silhouetted against the frame, a pistol extended in his right hand. In the murky light, Prophet couldn’t make out his face. But he was slender and wore a cream shirt, brown vest, and dark trousers. Garters ringed his arms just above his elbows.
Fianna snapped, “Wallace!”
Prophet scowled, befuddled. Wallace Polk?
The man mumbled incoherently as, stepping slowly forward, he kept the pistol extended at Prophet—a snub-nosed Bisley, it appeared. Probably a .38.
Prophet turned toward him, keeping his left hand on the girl, ready to jerk her behind him. Sure enough—Wallace Polk, the town druggist, had a .38 pointed right at his head. As the man approached, Prophet saw the rheumy blue eyes of Wallace Polk, minus their mildness. Snarling and shivering before him, like Polk’s evil twin, the man extended the pistol and thumbed back the hammer.
Prophet stared down the bore, wide-eyed. “Easy, Polk. Better give that to me. Don’t want no one gettin’ hurt here now, do we?”
Prophet extended his right hand half-defensively, only half-hoping Polk would give him the gun.
“I saw you walking this way,” Polk spit through gritted teeth. His voice had lost its customary timidity and politeness. “Just knew what you had on your sexually depraved mind.”
Prophet’s brow arched. “Sexually depraved?”
“Weren’t satisfied with Frieda Schwartzenberger, eh? Decided to comfort the sheriff’s grieving daughter?”
Prophet winced as one part of his brain wondered if his bath with Frieda was known throughout the entire county, while the other tried to grasp Polk’s presence here in Fianna’s parlor, snarling like a wolf over a deer bone.
Wallace Polk with his liquid blue eyes and timid grin.
Prophet’s brain revolted at the image.
Was this whole town crazy? Maybe the place really had been hexed by an Indian spirit, as Mad Mary had insinuated.
Meanwhile, he tore his eyes from. Polk’s crazed face to stare down the Bisley’s gaping bore, awaiting and dreading the blossoming report, the bullet carving a messy hole through his brain.
So this was where it ended. After all the badmen he’d hauled to justice, he was going to be taken down by a mild-mannered, crazed druggist with a burr under his saddle for a crazed brunette.
Who would tell Louisa? She would sure be disgusted with him, after she got over the heartbreak.
Prophet’s brain recoiled again. Was he getting as crazy as everyone else around here? He wasn’t going to just stand here and get shot by a druggist.
“Polk, goddamnit, there’s nothing goin’ on between me and Fianna. Put down that gun!”
“Wallace, you put that gun down this instant!” Fianna ordered, her voice quaking slightly.
Polk didn’t seem to hear them. Eyes so wide the whites glowed, he moved toward Prophet across the room, one slow step at a time. He kept the gun extended at Prophet’s face, his hand shaking. Behind the gun, his thin lips formed a snarl. Sweat dribbled down his cheeks.
He stopped ten feet away. “I should’ve known you’d prey on our women. That’s what men like you do, isn’t it? Lone wolf, come to town. Come to take all the women. I tried to tell Henry—”
“Wallace—”
Polk’s pinched voice cut her off. “He’s just taking advantage of your sorrow. I’d have been at the funeral, but you know how people talk.”
“Wallace I didn’t want you at the funeral. I’ve told you, whatever there might have been between us ... it’s over now…”
He hadn’t heard a word of it. He jerked the gun at Prophet, but spoke to her. “I won’t hold this against you ... at a time like this. I know it’s me you love.”
He paused, sniffed as though he had pepper in his nose, then shifted his eerily bright, narrowed eyes back to Prophet. He steadied the gun. His hand shook.
“Polk, no!” shouted Prophet.
“You bastard
The gun barked. In the close quarters, it sounded like a cannon. Instinctively, Prophet threw himself against the girl. She cried out as she slammed into the table, knocking over glasses and bottles.
Though fired from only ten feet away, the bullet had somehow missed him.
Prophet swung his left arm toward Polk. His hand closed on the man’s forearm, then slid to the gun. As he wrenched it free of the druggist’s grip, he straightened and leveled a left jab at the man’s face, connecting solidly with cheekbone.
Polk gave a cry and stumbled sideways and back before dropping to his knees. He lunged forward, as though trying to bolt to his feet, but reconsidered and cowered on his haunches. His shoulders fell as he lowered his head in defeat, brought his hands to his face, and sobbed.
“Goddamn you!”
‘Took the words right out of my mouth,” Prophet said, breathing hard, adrenaline still raging in his veins.
His glance found the small, round hole in the wall behind where he’d been standing when Polk had fired. Polk’s quivering hand had nudged the bullet a hair left.
Prophet turned to Fianna. She too was on her knees, leaning on one arm against the table. Her hair hung down along her face. Several bottles and tumblers had fallen from the table and lay strewn about the spread folds of her nightgown and wrapper.
“Goddamn you, Wallace,” she said, her voice low and hard. She swept her hair from her face with one hand and sniffed. The movement caused her to lose her balance, and she had to grab the table again. “I told you there was nothing between us ... could never be anything between us!”
Polk dropped his head even lower, then jerked it up, regarding her with crazy-bright eyes—the eyes of a dope-head, like those Prophet had seen in opium dens. Obviously, the druggist had been dipping into his own goodies behind the counter. “You goddamn bitch! You whore!”
“Shut up!”
Her scream on top of the gunshot still echoing in his head made Prophet’s temples pound. Enough of this. He reached down, grabbed Polk under both arms, and heaved him to his feet, then shoved him out into the foyer.
“Goddamn her to hell!” the druggist wailed. Stumbling forward, he dropped to his knees, rolling up the runner around his shoes.
“Outside, Polk.” Prophet jerked the man to his feet, then gave him another shove toward the front door. ‘Time to get sobered up, old son.”
Polk turned to yell back toward the parlor, “You’ll never get any more gifts from me, you goddamn, double-crossing bitch. Your father wanted you to marry me! That was his wish!”
“Shut up!” Fianna’s voice broke on a sob.
Prophet turned the druggist around, shoved him through the inside door, across the porch, and out through the screen door. Polk stumbled down the brick steps and fell in the front yard.
He was making wheezing, grunting, crying sounds. Insane sounds. The sounds of a man so overcome with emotion he was like an animal.
Prophet hunkered down beside him, grabbed a fistful of the man’s collar, and shook. Polk’s head flopped back and forth. “You the bastard been taking potshots at me, Wallace? Huh? Are ya?”
He stared into the man’s eyes. Polk stared back, glassy-eyed crazy, like some leashed stud dog heated up over some forbidden bitch two houses down. But for a moment, they acquired a genuinely befuddled cast, lines forming in the bridge of his nose.
He either didn’t understand or didn’t know what Prophet was talking about. Probably the latter. He’d just proven he wasn’t much of a shot.
Prophet sighed and straightened. He had a mind to throw the druggist in jail with Leo Embry. But that wouldn’t change anything that had happened here tonight. Polk wasn’t a killer, just a hophead obsessed with a woman who didn’t want him.
Glaring down at Polk, Prophet saw the wedding band on the man’s finger. “Stay away from the lady,” he ordered. “Whatever you had goin’, or thought you had goin’—it’s over. Go on home to your wife.”
He turned, started back to the house, then stopped. Polk had leaned forward and was grinding his forehead into the grass, as though trying to burrow into the earth.
Prophet stared at him a moment, sucking his tooth. He really needed to get out of this town. “Polk, Polk ...”
Polk looked up at him, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“You can pick your revolver up at the jailhouse tomorrow:’
With that, Prophet turned to the house. As he did so, he saw two figures standing in the yard next door, silhouetted against the twilight sky. Neighbors. Behind the house, a dog was yipping. A horse whinnied in a pasture.
Prophet threw a neighborly hand out. “It’s all right, folks. Just a little misunderstandin’.” As he walked back into the house, he wondered how long it would take for this gossip to make the rounds.
The druggist, the bounty hunter, and the dead marshal’s daughter...
He found Fianna where he’d left her, sobbing on the floor beside the table. He was about to kneel down beside her when he saw the cigar box next to her bourbon glass, on the smaller table beside her chair.
Curious, he went over and picked up the box, tipped it to the wan light filtering through a window.
Barely covering the bottom of the box was a fine, white powder. He knew what it was before poking a finger inside, then touching the powder to his tongue.
Cocaine.
One of Polk’s “gifts,” no doubt. Prophet had never indulged in the drug himself, but had been in enough opium dens across the West to recognize it.
A little made you sweet and dreamy. Too much turned your wolf loose. Fianna lay on the floor, knees beneath her, sobbing into her arms and crying, “Daddy, Daddy, don’t leave me!”
She turned her head, saw Prophet holding the box and watching her with distaste.
“Give that to me,” she sniffed, lifting her head and extending an arm. “Hand me the box.”
“Nope.” Prophet flipped the lid closed, set the box on the table, and crouched over Fianna, lifting her by the arms. “Time for bed.”
He picked her up easily and, one arm under her neck, the other under her knees, carried her out of the parlor and into the foyer. “Okay,” she said, regaining her saucy tone, “we can do that too.”
“You need a long night’s sleep. Then tomorrow should be a little better than today, and the next day better than that.”
She tried kissing him, but he pulled his head away.
“Where’s your bedroom?”
“Upstairs,” she said through a sigh, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and snuggling against him. “You feel nice.”
“Don’t do that,” he said, breathing heavily as he climbed the stairs.
She nibbled his neck, feeling warm and soft in his arms. Her lips and teeth sucked and chewed at his neck, raising his temperature. “Can that shit,” he growled. “Is this your room?”
She was too busy nuzzling his neck and licking his ear-lobes to answer him. Before him, a door stood ajar. He shouldered through it. In the dull light through the window, he saw a brass bed with a ruffled pink skirt, brushes, combs, and other female accoutrements strewn upon a dresser. On a small writing desk, books and papers were piled. The air smelled like her—lightly sweet nectar— minus the bourbon.
He laid her on the bed and tried to rise, but she kept her hands clasped around his neck. “No, don’t go,” she gasped. “Stay with me.”
“Sorry, lady,” he said, working her hands loose, “but I don’t take advantage of liquored-up women.”
“Oh, do!” She clung to him with a desperate, carnal need that was almost palpable. Her breath was hot against his face. “Please stay. You won’t regret it!”
She lifted her head, clamped her mouth over his, and thrust her tongue between his teeth. He tried to straighten, but she clung to him. He tried pushing her away, but the kiss and the musky warmth of her body against him drained the strength from his arms.
Stoked by hers, his own desire rose. He tried to fight it off, like an old lady chasing the same old neighborhood cur off her porch for the hundredth time in a year. But that cur would have none of it. It knew the old lady wasn’t serious. She’d snarl and poke at him, but eventually she’d soften to his feeble yelps, warm to the charm in his eyes, put away the broom, and fetch him a bone.
That’s what Prophet was doing now as he lowered himself and the girl back down to the bed—fetching his old, amorous, flea-bit mutt another bone, one of many he’d thrown it over the years. He kissed Fianna’s cheeks, nuzzled her neck, smoothed her hair back from her face, and entangled his tongue with hers.
As he ran his big hands across her narrow shoulders, he removed the nightgown and the wrapper in one fell swoop, laying her out naked and pale before him—a long, willowy length of curving woman.
Her slender legs kicked as she begged him to take her. Her pale, almond-shaped breasts were exposed by the last of the day’s feeble light washing through the room’s single window, the nipples erect.
“Please,” she whined, grappling with his cartridge belt, shoving at it, pulling, trying to get it off. ‘Take me!”
He heaved up on his knees, removed the belt, and dropped it to the floor. She was already pulling at the buttons of his denim jeans. He nudged her hands away, opened his jeans, slid them and his underwear down to his ankles. She reached for his member, ran her hands up and down its iron length, pressing it against her belly and sobbing, “Now!”
And then he was lying between her raised knees, propped on his arms, thrusting. She locked and unlocked her ankles around his back, pulled at his hair, clawed at his shirt, crying, “Harder! Harder!”
As he lay toiling between her knees, grunting, wheezing, and reeling, he knew he was making a big mistake. At any time, the man who’d been trying to ambush him could sneak into the house, or crazy Wallace Polk could return to finish the job he’d started.
This was the crazy kind of thing that got bounty hunters killed. Thinking with your pecker was a good way to get your head shot off.
But knowing that and being able to do anything about it were two different things. Prophet had made the same mistake before. But as he toiled and sweated atop Fianna Whitman’s writhing body, feeling her skin stick to his, her mouth drawing wide and taut with every plunge of his body into hers, he knew he’d make it again.
And he’d continue to live as long as his luck held. When his luck ran out, he’d die. It was as simple as that.
But there were worse ways to go…
He reflected on that as, ten minutes later, Fianna lay curled against him, sleeping with her head on his chest, one naked knee curled over his.
He’d pulled up his jeans, but he hadn’t buttoned them yet. He would in a minute. But first he’d lie here, make sure she was fast asleep before he slipped away. He didn’t want to wake her, but he also needed rest.
Yep, there were worse ways to go, all right. But now that his passion was spent, he lay here in the dark room, atop the quilts, listening for any strange sounds that might mean the drygulcher was near... or that Wallace Polk had returned.
The only sounds were two dogs barking desultorily and a cow complaining in a pasture south of town. The house creaked when the breeze kicked up, fluttered the lace curtains out from the window. A wagon passed near the house, clattering over ruts.
The girl opened her mouth as she slept, and a thin trickle of drool puddled on Prophet’s chest.
He stared at the ceiling, running the night through his head, trying to figure out what had driven Wallace Polk and Fianna Whitman to nose dope.
Prophet suspected that, in her case, it had something to do with her father, possibly about how he’d acquired his relative wealth as well as the grisly way he’d died. He might have been taking graft from saloon owners or confidence men, possibly whiskey traders, gunrunners, or rustlers. It was a common enough practice amongst poorly paid Western lawmen. If so, he and Fianna had been living on dirty money.
But what about Wallace Polk? What had rubbed his fur in the wrong direction?
Prophet wasn’t finding anything out lying here—not that he really wanted to. He’d leave the town to its secrets once his reward money arrived and Henry Crumb returned.
And good riddance to Bitter Creek and its dunder-headed, drygulching townsfolk…
Prophet slipped out from beneath the girl, covered her with a quilt, and dressed quietly in the dark room. A few minutes later, he stepped out the front door and stood in the yard before the porch. Gazing cautiously around the yard, he expected to see a gun blossom somewhere off in the darkness that had closed over the town.
After a quiet minute, he built and lit a quirley and headed back toward the main drag. He was nearly halfway there when he had a feeling he was being followed.
Twice he stopped, taking cover in the shadows of a chicken coop and under an outside staircase, watching and listening, smoking the quirley cupped in his left palm.
He saw nothing but the wind nudging shutters, a stray cat slinking behind an empty whiskey barrel, and Mad Mary coupling with some wheezing oldster in the alley behind the post office.
As he crossed Main, someone blew the glass out of the jailhouse only a foot right of his right shoulder. He hit the ground a second after the rifle’s bark had reached his ears.