Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) (10 page)

‘
Nice
shootin’,’ the girl told him at last.

Prophet grunted.
‘Can I buy you a
drink?’

The girl walked toward him,
blond curls bouncing on her shoulders, chin thong swinging against
her poncho. She stepped over the bodies, sidled over to a table to
Prophet
’s
left, grabbed a glass from it, and brought it over. She set the
glass on Prophet’s table and sat down in the chair across from
him.

‘
Already have a drink, thanks.’

‘
Sarsaparilla?’

‘
Yep,’
the girl said when she’d taken a sip.

Prophet gave a sardonic chuff.
Looking at her sitting there sipping her red bubbly water, all
peaches and cream skin and blond hair and milk teeth, she could
have been on her way home from Sunday school. You never
could
’ve
guessed she’d sunk three .44 pills into one bad-man and left the
other minus his oysters.

‘
Figured a girl like you’d drink rye straight up with a
blood chaser.’

The girl
’s face was expressionless.
‘Nope—just sarsaparilla for me, please. That stuff you’re drinkin’
tastes like badger pee and fuzzies the brain.’

Prophet looked at her without
saying anything for several seconds.
‘What’s your name?’

‘
Louisa.’

‘
Louisa what?’

‘
Why?’

Prophet shrugged.
‘Why
not?’

‘
I
don’t like men knowin’ anymore about me than they have to for
civilized conversation.’

‘
Okay,’ Prophet said with a sigh. ‘Then I suppose telling me
what you’re doin’ here and why you killed those two men upstairs is
out of the question?’

‘
Yep.’
She drained her glass and set it back on the table. Standing, she
said, ‘It was nice meeting you, Mr. Prophet.’

‘
Where
you goin’?’

‘
After
the others.’

‘
How
do you know where they are?’

‘
Because I’ve been following them for most of a
year.’

Prophet frowned,
incredulous.
‘You have?’

‘
Yep.’

‘
Then
I suppose you know they raided Luther Falls yesterday
afternoon.’

‘
That’s right.’

‘
Where
in the hell were you?’

‘
Outside of town, in an old barn. I trailed ‘em to the
outskirts of town. I would’ve warned the sheriff—if there is a
sheriff—but I didn’t know where they were headed until they were
almost there.’

Prophet stared at her again, as
if at a puzzle he couldn
’t begin to fathom. ‘Why is a nice-looking little
gal like yourself tracking a herd of gunnies like them?’

‘
I
have my reasons.’ She turned and started for the door. ‘Now I best
get after the others.’

When she
’d left, Prophet sat there, his
head swirling. Finally, he finished his beer, got up, and walked
outside. The girl was heading out of town on the black Morgan that
had been hitched to the rack. When she made the outskirts, she
heeled the gelding into a gallop, and was soon swallowed up by the
brown grass and rolling prairie, heading north.

Prophet turned to his right and
saw the barman heading toward the saloon with two men in bib-front
coveralls.
‘Sorry for the trouble,’ Prophet said to the barman as he
untied Mean and Ugly’s reins from the rack.

‘
Wait
a minute, Mister,’ the barman called. ‘You best wait for the county
sheriff. You got some explainin’ to do.’

‘
You
saw it,’ Prophet said, mounting up. ‘You explain it.’

He reined the dun around and
kicked him into a trot. At the edge of town he reined Mean and Ugly
northward and kicked him into a ground-eating gallop.
He
’d ridden
nearly half a mile before the girl came into sight. She’d slowed
her horse into a canter, which made it easier for Prophet to catch
up to her.

When he was about fifty yards
behind her, she heard him and turned around, reaching through a
slit in her skirt—for the gun, no doubt. She halted the action when
she recognized Prophet, and turned back in her saddle to scowl over
the Morgan
’s
ears.

‘
What
do you want?’ she groused as he drew abreast of her.

‘
Same
thing you do,’ Prophet said. ‘The Red River Gang.’

‘
Why?’

‘
‘
Cause I was in Luther Falls when they rode in and
shot up the town. They kidnapped a girl, the daughter of the couple
who ran the mercantile. They not only shot the girl’s parents in
cold blood, but they shot the sheriff, too. A nice old fart named
Arnie Beckett.’

‘
You
live there?’

‘
No, I
was just passin’ through. But I seen it happen. And since there
ain’t no more law to go after those men, I’m doing it myself. I’m
sort of in the profession, you might say.’

The girl sighed.
‘Well, I’m sure
there’s plenty of bounty on their heads. They’ve cut a wide swath,
that bunch.’

‘
I’m
not after the bounties,’ Prophet said.

The girl looked at him
pointedly.
‘Neither am I.’

‘
You
know, I had a feeling you weren’t,’ Prophet said with an ironic
wince. ‘Well, I told you my story. What’s yours?’

The girl rode along in silence
for a minute, obviously pondering her response. Finally, she
said,
‘They
killed my family.’ That’s all she said, and she didn’t turn to look
at him, but kept her gaze straight ahead at the rutted wagon trail
they were following.

‘
Where? When?’

She sighed heavily.
‘Last year.
Nebraska.’

Prophet looked at her, waiting
for more. No more came. Finally, he said,
‘Well, what in the hell made you
think you could run them down? You’re just a girl, for chrissakes.
I bet you aren’t seventeen.’

‘
I am
seventeen. And being ‘just a girl’ has come in mighty handy a time
or two.’

‘
A
time or two?’

‘
Actually, three times so far.’

Prophet tipped his hat back
from his forehead impatiently and scowled at her.
‘What are you
saying?’

Louisa shrugged.
‘I’ve already done
away with three of ‘em. Just waited for the group to split up and
went after ‘em one at a time. One I stabbed in a privy outside
Julesburg, Colorado. Another one I caught with a whore in Deadwood
Gulch. And the third one, Jimmy McPhee was his name, was trying to
get into my bloomers when he stopped to help me with my horse I
told him had come up lame. That was in southern Dakota, outside
Sioux Falls. Ever been there?’

‘
Once
or twice,’ Prophet grumbled, staring at the girl,
mystified.

‘
Nasty
place, ain’t it? I think some Saturday night the sheriff should
lock all the owlhoots in the saloons and burn the whole kit ‘n’
caboodle to the ground. The whole damn town.’

‘
You’re a real charmer, Miss Louisa.’

She favored him with a cockeyed
smile.
‘Thank you, Mr. Prophet.’

‘
What’s your last name?’

‘
I
guess it ain’t no big secret. Bonaventure.’

‘
Louisa Bonaventure?’

‘
That’s right.’

‘
From
Nebraska?’

‘
My
folks farmed out there, near the Platte River, before the Red River
Gang rode through. Of course, they weren’t called the Red River
Gang back then. That’s just been since they moved north to get away
from the federal marshals down Kansas and Missouri way.’

‘
They
killed your pa and ma?’

‘
And
my two sisters and my brother, James.’ She squeezed her eyes
tightly closed and grimaced, sucking air through her teeth, as
though the images in her head were far too much for her to bear.
‘Let’s talk about something else now!’

‘
Okay,
Louisa,’ Prophet said quickly, seeing the pain she was suddenly in.
‘I’m sorry.’ They rode in silence for a while, Prophet reflecting
what a tragedy it was that this pretty young girl, who should be
churning butter on a porch somewhere and daydreaming about the
neighbor boy who sparked her on Saturday nights was instead riding
the vengeance trail, her eyes flat and cunning, her innocence lost
without a trace.

He waited awhile before asking
her if she
’d
been alone since she’d started hunting the Red River
Gang.

‘
Except for nights with farm folk here and there,’ she said,
the color returning to her cheeks. ‘I try to stay away from people.
Men, especially.’

Prophet glanced at her
sheepishly.
‘Well, not all men are bad, Louisa,’ he said, casting her a
reassuring smile. ‘How ‘bout ridin’ with me awhile?’

She jerked a suspicious look at
him.
‘Wouldn’t you just like that?’ She looked him up and down,
mostly down. ‘Why, you got rascal written all over you!’

Prophet flushed,
offended.
‘I
do not!’

‘
Yes,
you do.’

‘
Listen, Missy, I’ve never once in my life laid a hand on a
woman who didn’t want me to. Never needed to!’

She looked him over again, but
this time she didn
’t say anything and her eyes were hard to
figure.

His anger waning—the girl was
right to be suspicious of strangers—Prophet shrugged.
‘I just meant, why
not throw in together for a while? We’re both alone, and we share
the same objective. And hell, considerin’ how we cleaned up those
four back in Campbell, I’d say we make a pretty good team.’ He
really just didn’t like the thought of such a pretty young girl
being all alone out here. It gave him a lonely, haunted
feeling.

She didn
’t reply for nearly a minute.
‘I’d have to think on it. I can’t go gettin’ mixed up with some
stranger.’

‘
You
think about it, then,’ Prophet said. ‘In the meantime, we might as
well ride to Wahpeton together. That’s where the gang’s
headed.’

Louisa shrugged
noncommittally.
‘I reckon it couldn’t hurt to ride together that
far.’

‘
I
have a stop by the river, though. I caught one of ‘em this mornin’,
and I left him tied to a tree.’

‘
You
did!’

Prophet grinned proudly.
‘Yes,
ma’am.’

‘
Which
one?’

‘
Didn’t tell me his name.’

‘
Well,
what are we waitin’ for?’ she said impatiently, spurring the Morgan
into a gallop.

They rode hard for fifteen
minutes, and then the river came into view over a hill. At first,
Prophet couldn
’t remember where he’d left his prisoner, but then he
recognized a landmark and headed toward a clump of trees in a
southward curve in the Ottertail.

Riding up to the copse, he dismounted, and
Louisa Bonaventure did the same. They tied their horses to low
branches, then Prophet followed the trail of bent grass into the
trees, Louisa following closely behind.

The prisoner was asleep but
woke with a start when Prophet kicked the man
’s foot. ‘You still alive?’
Prophet asked the man.

The man
’s voice was raspy and he was
breathing hard. ‘Kiss my ass,’ he growled. His arm was bleeding
badly, the entire sleeve soggy scarlet. His eyes found Louisa,
who’d stopped beside Prophet to gaze grimly down at the
man.

‘
Wayne
MacDonald,’ she said.

The man frowned at Prophet. His
voice was thin.
‘Who in the hell is she, and how in the hell does she know
my name?’

‘
I
studied the wanted dodgers on all you boys,’ the girl replied in a
tone of withering malevolence. ‘I could pick each one of you out of
a crowded train station. Prepare to meet your maker, you murdering
savage.’

The girl yanked her silver-plated revolver
from a fold in her skirt and aimed it in both hands.

‘
Hey,
wait a minute,’ Prophet objected, reaching out and shoving the gun
down. ‘What in the hell do you think you’re doin’,
girl?’

‘
She’s
crazy!’ MacDonald cried. ‘She’s plumb crazy!’