Free Helldorado by Peter Brandvold Page B

Inn don’t sound like mine, I’m a monkey’s uncle!” He laughed and hoped Encina didn’t see the look of consternation on Louisa’s face. “If you could point me in the right direction, I’ll go on over and toss my gear down.”
    “I’ll be happy to, Mr. Prophet,” the banker said, moving out from behind his desk.
    “The way I see it,” the bounty hunter said as the younger Encina showed him and Louisa out of his office, “you best call me Lou or Prophet. The last Mr. Prophet I knew I left back in Georgia before the Little Misunderstandin’.”
    “In that case, I’m Miguel.”
    “But you sign the checks.”
    “Please, Lou,” the young banker said when he and Louisa were standing outside his open office door, looking up at the bounty hunter, who was a good head taller than he, “it’s Miguel. And I hope it’s all right if we, too, can be on a first-name basis, Miss Bonaventure.”
    Louisa flushed again, and Prophet was vaguely conscious of a little jab of jealousy in the pit of his belly. He’d be damned if the girl wasn’t tindering a fire for their young employer. “Of course,” she said, dipping her chin and sliding a lock of wind-tussled blond hair away from her eye.
    Miguel bowed again and lightly tapped his shoes together like a French soldier. “Louisa it is.”
    He gestured for her and Prophet to lead the way to the door, and when they’d all filed onto the boardwalk fronting the bank, Miguel pointed out a tall, narrow, false-fronted building on a side street about a block south of the main one. It was one of the older, shabbier buildings that Prophet had seen so far, and it announced itself as THE MULESKIN-NER’S INN in sun-blistered green letters.
    When the young banker had pointed out the Golden Slipper behind the opera house, which couldn’t have been more opposite to the Muleskinner’s if that had been the builder’s sole intention, he turned to Louisa while rubbing his palms together slowly, as though warming himself before a hot fire. “If you have no plans for this evening, I’d like to ask you out to dinner, Miss Bona . . . I mean, Louisa. We could dine right there in the Golden Slipper and then, perhaps, I could show you around town, start getting you acquainted with some of the good townsfolk of Juniper.”
    Louisa’s eyes slid to Prophet. And then Miguel’s did, too, and he said quickly albeit insincerely, “Of course, you’d be more than welcome, too, Mr. Prophet. . . .”
    “Balderdash!” Prophet said, feeling a little heavy-footed as he crossed the boardwalk and grabbed Mean and Ugly’s reins from the hitchrack. “You two younkers go out and enjoy yourselves. Me, I’ll probably finagle a meal out of Hell-Bringin’ Hiram and then fleece him at euchre.”
    Miguel turned to Louisa, and the relief was evident in his warm, sparkling eyes. “Shall we say six thirty? That gives you ample time for a nap, if you wish.”
    Louisa gave Prophet a fleeting, oblique glance.
    “Six thirty would be fine, Miguel.” She smiled sweetly, without a trace of her usual irony. “I’ll be dressed and waiting downstairs.”
    When Miguel had bid them both farewell and headed into the bank, Louisa swung up onto her pinto. Adjusting the reins in her hand, she glanced at Prophet and said sort of shyly and noncommittally, “He’s nice.”
    “Damn nice fella.”
    She narrowed an eye at Prophet, suddenly looking more girlish than he’d seen her since they’d first met on the bounty trail up in the Dakota-Minnesota country. “You sure you don’t mind, Lou?”
    “Why would I mind? He’s a nice kid, and he’s your age. What’s more, he’s got money.”
    She frowned as Prophet reined Mean and Ugly out away from the hitchrail. “You’re not jealous?”
    “I didn’t say that.” He winked at her. “You go on over to the Golden Slipper. You’ll probably get a bath there in a golden tub or some such. Hell, they’ll probably even bring you up a sarsaparilla in a crystal