Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) (14 page)

Prophet exhaled sharply and
headed through the door. When he
’d stepped onto the landing he heard a man
groan somewhere beneath him.

‘
Help!’ a voice croaked.

Again, Prophet froze. Swinging
sharply to Louisa, he said,
‘What the hell was that?’

‘
Oh,
no!’ the girl sputtered, her face bleaching as she gazed over the
railing. ‘I thought I killed that son of a bitch.’

‘
Toomer,’ a man drawled in a trembling voice. ‘Toomer ... Da
... Dan ...’

Fortunately, the din in the
saloon was too loud for the man
’s voice to carry. But if one of the
others was outside. ...

‘
Well,
finish him, goddamnit!’ Prophet snarled.

But Louisa had already started
down the stairs, taking no caution on the squawky steps. Prophet
went down behind her, watching his feet so he
didn
’t
tumble face first with the kidnapped girl in his arms. He’d reached
the body just as the man called out again, louder this time, ‘No!
Toom—’ Something cut him off.

Prophet watched Louisa move
back toward him in the darkness.
‘Got him,’ she said, holding up a knife
that gleamed wetly in the stray light filtering from the saloon’s
front.

‘
Hey,
what’s goin’ on back there?’ a man called from the other side of
the saloon. ‘Jack, the gremlins get you, or what?’

‘
Let’s
move!’ Prophet hissed at Louisa.

He wheeled with the kidnapped girl in his
arms, and cut across the side street. Louisa ran beside him.

‘
Hey,
Jack!’ one of the gang members called.

Prophet could tell the man was
behind the saloon now. He
’d find the body soon.

Prophet and Louisa pressed
their backs against the building on the corner opposite the saloon.
Prophet looked around to see how many men were after them, but he
couldn
’t see
anything yet.

Turning to Louisa, he
carped,
‘That was a hell of a crazy stunt, kid. You’re gonna get us
all killed yet!’

‘
I
thought I killed him dead!’

‘
Well,
you didn’t. And...’ Prophet let his voice trail off, too frustrated
for expression. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you hightail it back to the
room you finagled. Take the back alleys and don’t stop for
nothing.’

‘
Where
you going?’

‘
I’m
taking this girl back to Luther Falls. We can’t stay here. Now!
Go!’

He gave Louisa a shove and
started the opposite way, toward the main street and his horse. He
stopped angrily when Louisa called,
‘Lou?’

He turned to her, a slim figure in the
shadows against the building.

‘
Meet
me in Fargo tomorrow night.’

Before Prophet could respond,
she
’d
slipped around the building’s rear corner and was gone.

Prophet didn
’t have time to consider the
message. Turning back around, he trotted down the boardwalk toward
Main Street, shaking his head and hissing, ‘Crazy goddamn
younker!’

He paused at the edge of the main street and
took another gander at the saloon. It was lit up like a lone ship
at a T-wharf, shadows moving in the windows. Several men were
kicking around behind the place, talking loudly enough to be heard
above the roar from within.

Prophet ran across the street,
frightening Mean and Ugly, who
’d been dozing with his head down. With the girl
in his arms, he clumsily removed the bridle reins from the hitch
rack.

‘
Easy,
boy, easy,’ he whispered to the fiddle-footed horse.

He turned a stirrup out and peered down at
the girl, whose eyes fluttered as she drifted in and out of
consciousness, the corners of her eyes crinkled with pain.

‘
Listen, I’m gonna set you up on my horse, and then I’m
gonna climb up behind you. It might hurt a little, but don’t yell
out, okay?’

Prophet didn
’t think she heard him, but
then her eyes fluttered again, remained open for a second, and she
nodded slightly.

‘
There
you go, honey,’ he said gently, lifting her onto the saddle.
‘You’ll be home in no time.’

As he climbed up behind her,
she turned her head.
‘Who . . . ?’ she said. ‘Who ... are ...
?’

‘
I’m
Lou Prophet. Easy, now. Just lay your head back against my chest
and hold tight to the horn.’

He adjusted the quilt and sheet around her
legs and began turning Ugly away from the tie rail.

‘
Hey,
you!’ someone shouted.

A gun barked, the bullet sizzling the air
about six inches off his right ear. Mean and Ugly reared,
sidestepping, nearly throwing both Prophet and the girl into the
street.

The girl cried weakly, fighting
to hold on, and Prophet grabbed the horn and sawed the
reins.
‘Hoah, Mean . . .
easy!’

Another pistol barked, the slug
shattering a window in the general store. Prophet ducked, reining
Mean and Ugly leftward into the street. Without Prophet having to
slap the iron to him—the dun had been with Prophet long enough to
know when they were at death
’s doorstep—the horse lunged off its back legs and
fairly vaulted down the street, heading east at a hungry
gallop.

More pistol fire opened up
behind them—at least four shooters, Prophet guessed. The hail of
bullets sailed around and over Prophet
’s head as he leaned forward to
protect the girl. The slugs kicked dust at Mean’s feet, tore into
stores and water troughs, and shattered windows, before Prophet
kneed the horse southward around the first corner he came to,
feeling one of the slugs burn a nasty swath across his
thigh.

Well, they
’d discovered the body. And
then they’d seen him. Putting two and two together, they’d figured
the score.

On the plus side, they were
drunk, and he was sober as a parson. It would take them a good
fifteen or twenty minutes before they found and saddled their
horses, maybe longer. What
’s more, they’d have a hell of a time tracking him
in the dark.

He just hoped they
hadn
’t seen
Louisa....

He rode a circuitous route
through the edge of town, then headed south along the river. The
night was so dark
it was hard to see where he was going. He left the
particulars of the route to Mean and Ugly, as surefooted a mount as
Prophet had ever ridden and one of the few reasons he put up with
the cussed beast.

While he rode, his shoulders steadying the
girl before him, who gave occasional weak sighs of complaint and
lolled against his chest, he searched for a place he could cross
the swollen river, knowing the ferryman would be dead asleep at
this hour and that waking him would take too much time.

Several times he pulled the
horse eastward into the big cottonwoods sheathing the Red, only to
find the water far too wide and deep to cross without swimming.
When it didn
’t look like he was going to find a shallow enough ford,
however, he said to hell with it, turned the horse into the river,
and gave him the spurs.

The horse balked, snorting and lifting its
snout.

‘
Come
on, Mean, you candy-ass ...’

Grudgingly, as though entering
a pool of vipers, the horse mince-stepped into the water. It
wasn
’t long
before he was up to his neck and Prophet and the girl were up to
their waists.

The girl cried, recoiling at
the feel of the water.
‘Sorry, honey,’ Prophet said, putting his hand on
her shoulder to steady her. ‘We’re crossin’ the river. You’re okay.
Don’t frighten Mean. He’s scared enough the way it is.’

Prophet had a hell of a time
staying on the horse and keeping the girl mounted as well. The
water was black and bone-splitting cold, and the girl sobbed and
moaned in protest, breaking Prophet
’s heart with her cries of, ‘No ... please
... no ...’ After all that had happened to the poor young ’un, now
she was being swept across a river in the middle of the damn night.
And what was he taking her home to? Two dead parents and a shot-up
store.

The current took them
downstream a good quarter mile before the dun finally planted his
hooves and climbed out
of the water, Prophet and the girl dripping mud,
their teeth chattering. The bounty hunter brought the shivering
horse to a halt on the bank.

‘
You
all right, Miss?’ he asked the girl, tipping her gently against his
shoulder so he could look into her face.

Her teeth were chattering, her eyes were
squeezed shut now, and she said nothing.

‘
I’m
sorry about this, Miss. I’d build a fire and dry you out if we had
time, but we don’t. You’ll be home shortly, though.’

He reined Mean eastward out of the trees
along the river, the horse splashing through the six inches of
water and mud covering the prairie for at least a hundred yards
beyond the riverbed. Then he spurred him into a lope.

They rode hard along the pale wagon path,
the air cool against his wet clothes, his soaked denims clinging to
his skin. The girl moaned often, bobbing against his chest and
shoulder. The horse plunged eastward, blowing, his powerful muscles
rippling beneath the saddle. The sky was black, and the air smelled
of wet earth and budding leaves.

Prophet knew they were close to
farms when he detected wood smoke. He would have stopped at one and
asked for a warm bed for the girl, but he didn
’t want to put others in
danger. He had to get to Luther Falls and get the girl to
Cordelia’s, where she would be safe. He doubted the gang would
track him that far—twenty-five miles. They were too drunk, and he
was only one man, she, one girl.

He stopped to rest the horse
after an hour
’s hard ride. He dismounted and lay the girl against a
tree. She was moaning in earnest now, for the ride was
torturous.

‘
I’m
sorry, Miss,’ Prophet said, truly grieved.

‘
No,’
she said, wagging her head, lips trembling. ‘I can’t. Please ...
no. Leave me.’

‘
I’m
not gonna leave you, Miss ...’

‘
Please,’ she begged, reaching out and grabbing his hand.
She opened her eyes, which gleamed darkly, filled with pleading.
‘Don’t take me back there. I’m sick and ... and ... I can’t go back
there after ... what they done to me.’

‘
Oh,
Miss,’ Prophet said. ‘No one’s gonna—’

‘
Please shoot me, Mister!’ the girl cried in a gut-wrenching
little girl’s voice. ‘I can’t ride no more. My insides ache and...
after what they done to me!’ She broke down in tears, sobbing, and
Prophet let her lie there, half-cradled in his arms, pleading and
sobbing.

Finally, when
he
’d taken
as much time as he dared, he got up, took the horse’s reins, and
mounted up once again, easing the girl before him on the saddle.
She sobbed and shook her head, calling out for her mother—a mother
she would never see again. Grimly, Prophet reined the dun back onto
the trail and kneed him into another wind-splitting gallop toward
Luther Falls.

The girl cried out, grieving, for her
mother. Prophet pressed her head against his chest, his jaw set
grimly, his eyes hard, and tried to block out her cries as he
rode.

He thought of the girl in his
arms and of Louisa Bonaventure.
How many other children had the Red River
Gang torn the souls from?

How sweet it was going to be to make them
pay....

HANDSOME DAVE DUVALL reined his
horse to a skidding halt along the trees on the west bank of the
Red River. He squinted into the dark ahead of him, but
couldn
’t see
a thing. He didn’t think it was only because he’d had more than his
share of Wahpeton’s coffin varnish, either.

It was just too damn dark. Too dark for
riding and too dark for tracking.

Not only that, but it was a damn good night
for getting bushwhacked.

He raised his left hand as the
others approached at a gallop, nearly running him down.
‘Hold up, you
stupid sons o’ bitches,’ Duvall complained testily. Nothing made
him nastier than a good time interrupted, and a good time was just
what he and the boys had been having back at the Oasis.

The riders reined up, cursing,
yelling to the others behind them to do likewise. When they were
all stopped and gathered around him in the dark, Duvall
said,
‘Anyone get a good look at that son of a bitch?’

‘
I
just saw him from behind,’ called Frank Henry.

‘
Me,
too,’ said Jack Toomer. ‘Big bastard. He had the girl.’

Handsome Dave
Duvall
’s
partner, Dayton Flowers, turned to Duvall with a question in his
long, dark face— the at once timid and fierce face of a Welsh
parson’s boy raised on pious, soul-building strappings.
‘Lawman?’