Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) (20 page)

Gazing at her with
astonishment, Eddie Leach realized she would do exactly what
she
’d
promised.

‘
And
if you call out to your friend,’ she added, again reading his mind,
‘the last word will not have died from your lips before I’ve killed
you deader than a widow’s husband.’

His voice gaining a beseeching
tone, he said,
‘Well, what good’s it gonna do me to get on that horse?
You’re gonna kill me one way or another!’

‘
It
will give you several more precious seconds to breathe the air and
reflect on your life. Maybe even a minute or two. We humans do
cling to life so, when the chips are down. Seconds can feel like
hours.’

‘
Jesus
God, kid, you’re one crazy little bitch!’

Her voice remained maddeningly
level.
‘It’s
your choice. You can die slowly now, choking on your own bodily
fluids, or you can have the few extra minutes it takes you to climb
into the saddle and tighten the noose around your neck.’ She licked
her lips, inclined her head slightly, and gazed down the barrel at
his chest. ‘I’m go
ing to start counting now. When I get to three, I’m going
to shoot you in your right lung.’

She stared at him.

‘
One,
two—’

‘
All
right, all right!’ Leach cried, flabbergasted, his head pounding
now even harder than before.

He was stuck between a rock and a hard
place. There was no way out. All he could do was hope that some
miracle happened between now and the moment he stuck his head
through that noose.

Matt Sully heard the yell and opened his
eyes. Slowly, he sat up and looked around.

‘
Hey,
Leach?’

Eddie Leach was nowhere in sight.

‘
Who
in the hell yelled?’ Sully asked himself, wincing against the
throbbing in his head.

He was sure it was a yell
he
’d heard.
A loud one, coming from a long way off. And, come to think of it,
the voice had sounded like Leach’s. Was that why Sully’s heart was
pounding?

Sully stood, grunting, and shielded his eyes
against the bright sun, scanning the grassy terrain around him.

‘
Leach?’ he yelled.

He yelled it several times.
There was no more reply than the breeze rustling the cottonwood and
the nicker of Leach
’s horse standing with Sully’s nearby.

Sully saw the tree standing in the direction
from which he thought the yell had come. Corroborating his
assumption was a silvery trail of bent grass leading that way.
Hitching his gun belt on his hips, Sully began following the path
toward the tree.

When he was about a hundred yards from the
tree, Sully stopped. Something appeared to be hanging from it.
Something long and shaped like a body.

Frowning curiously, feeling a
sluggish reticence nip at
his already seared bowels, Sully drew his revolver
and resumed walking toward the tree. The closer he got, the more
reticent and fearful and cautious he became.

Approaching the tree, he stared
up at the body with wide-eyed horror and indignation.
‘Leach?’ he
whispered.

His mind swirled and wheeled and tumbled
back over itself. Was he dreaming? Was Eddie Leach really hanging
there from that tree, his neck stretched a good foot, out here in
the middle of nowhere?

Who? Why? How?

Sully heard feet crackle grass behind him,
but before he could wheel around, he felt the cold steel of a
pistol barrel jammed against his neck. He froze, bile flooding him,
his knees turning to glue.

‘
Kneel,’ came a girl’s voice.

‘
Wha
... wha . .. ?’

‘
Kneel
down.’

‘
Why
... who ... ?’

‘
Kneel
down!’

The man knelt down. Louisa Bonaventure
snugged her silver-plated revolver up to the back of his head and
fired two bullets through his skull. Then she wheeled, holstered
her revolver, and walked away through the grass.

Behind her,
Sully
’s body
tipped onto its side. Eddie Leach moved gently at the end of his
rope.

DRYING DISHES IN the kitchen of
her brothel three miles south of Fargo, Cora Ames looked out the
window into the backyard, and shook her head. The two French girls
were running around bare-breasted again, while several of
Cora
’s other
girls hung the wash on the lines strung between the cottonwoods
along the Wild Rice River.

All the girls were dressed skimpily, in
wrappers and pantaloons and such, their hair uncombed or in
curlers, but those two French girls just loved to waltz around
naked as the day they were born.

Frowning, Cora opened the
outside door and yelled,
‘Babette, Joelle! You’re going to catch your death
of cold runnin’ around like that! I declare, have some
sense!’

The girls ceased their
nymph like frolic
in the high, green grass, and turned to regard Cora beseechingly.
‘Oh, please, Cora!’ Joelle cried. ‘We have been bundled up all
winter. It feels so good’—the auburn-haired waif with big brown
eyes sensuously cupped her tiny breasts in her hands and rolled her
head to one side—’to have the air against our skin!’

‘
I’ll
give you something against your skin if you catch colds and can’t
work!’ Cora replied with several angry shakes of her small, plump
fist. ‘Now put some clothes on and help the other girls hang the
wash!’

‘
Oh,
Cora!’ Joelle complained.

‘
Don’t
‘Oh Cora,’ me, girl. Just do as you’re told!’

‘
Oui,
Madame,’
Babette said, crestfallen, as she and Joelle reluctantly
headed for the brightly colored wrappers they’d tossed on a tree
stump.

Sighing with dismay—those two
were going to be the death of her yet!—Cora returned to the
kitchen. As she set the plate she
’d been drying in the cupboard over the
sink, a girl’s voice sounded from the parlor.

‘
Miss
Cora—riders!’

Cora checked the clock above
the cupboard. It was only four o
’clock—too early for the hands from the
bonanza farm over west. Those boys would be planting their wheat
and potatoes until sunset. The cowboys from the nearby ranch were
tied up with calving.

Frowning, Cora set down her towel and walked
into the parlor, where the rawboned but pretty German girl, Guida,
was sitting on the red plush sofa, absently stroking the kitten in
her lap while she read an illustrated newspaper, moving her lips to
sound out the English which still befuddled her. Marci, an orphan
from Illinois, stood before the window, barefoot and in a Chinese
kimono—a gift from a railroad man. She had a dust rag in her hand
and a sleeping cap on her head.

Turning to Cora curiously, she
said,
‘A
whole pack of men on horses . ..’

Cora sidled up to the girl and
gazed out the window. Sure enough, a band of riders was pounding
down the road from the west, heading this way. When the men had
moved close enough for Cora to get a look at the two lead riders,
her stomach tossed and sweat popped out on her
lip.

‘
Girls,’ she said without moving her eyes from the window,
‘fetch the others and go upstairs.’

‘
Huh—what?’ Marci said, bewildered.

‘
Do as
I say,’ Cora said. ‘Stay there until I tell you it’s
safe.’

Guida said from the
sofa,
‘Miss
Cora, what is wrong . .. ?’

‘
Just
do as I say!’ Cora snapped, a slight trill in her voice.

Both girls jumped and hurried
from the room. When Cora heard the back door close, she moved
stiffly to the foyer, her slippered feet heavy with fear, and
stepped onto the porch, closing the door behind her. She walked to
the porch steps and stopped beside the sign nailed to an awning
beam, which read
COWBOYS AND FARMERS—SCRAPE THE DUNG FROM YOUR BOOTS BEFORE
ENTERING.

She adjusted her gray flannel wrapper over
her giant bosom and folded her arms over her chest, trying to keep
from shaking. Every vein in her body filled with dread as she
watched the ragtag team of hard-featured horsemen canter into the
yard, scattering chickens. They reined up before the porch, dust
billowing, horses blowing and shaking their bridles and bits.

‘
Hello, Miss Cora!’ Handsome Dave Duvall greeted the woman
exuberantly, checking his mount down before the tie rail. ‘We’re
back!’

Cora Ames set her jaw to hide her fear as
she stared back at the handsome rake in his dusty black frock coat,
string tie, and black hat. With his piercing gray-green eyes,
dimpled chin, and brushy, upturned mustaches, he was indeed a
handsome devil. But a devil he was nonetheless, and the worst Cora
Ames had ever laid eyes on.

As her eyes skidded apprehensively between
Duvall and Dayton Rowers, equally as bad, she wished she still had
the big Indian, Leonard Two Horses, riding shotgun around the
place.

Finding her tongue at last, she
said,
‘Dave
Duvall, you and your men are not wanted here.’

Duvall frowned.
‘Huh?’

‘
In
light of what happened during your last visit, I’ll have to ask you
to leave.’

‘
Leave?’

The puzzled frown still etched on his
whiskered, handsome face, Duvall turned to his partner. Flowers sat
beside Duvall on a skewbald horse lathered with sweat and peppered
with dust and weeds.

Flowers was as ugly as Duvall was handsome,
with his long, horsey face, red-rimmed hound-dog eyes, and long,
greasy hair hanging straight down from his frayed bowler. His
pallid, large-pored skin was pitted and scarred, and a brown,
teardrop-shaped birthmark resided to the left of his hooked nose, a
black hair curling out of it. The sight of the man made Cora weak
with revulsion and horror, and it was a hell of a job to not show
it.

Flowers returned
Duvall
’s
look with a grin, and shrugged.

Duvall turned back to the madam
holding her ground on the porch.
‘Cora, I don’t have the foggiest idea what
you’re talkin’ about.’

‘
Your
boys tore up my house, Dave. They like to burned the place to the
ground, and ... and then there ... there was what you did to
Vivian....’

Flowers looked at Duvall,
wrinkling his bushy brows.
‘Vivian? Who in the hell’s Vivian?’

It was
Duvall
’s
turn to shrug.

‘
She’s
the one whose toe you bit off!’ Cora fairly yelled, angry now as
she remembered the poor girl screaming and bleeding as she stumbled
down the stairs. Vivian had long ago limped off with a horse buyer
from Glendive, Montana, but the memory of that night would haunt
Cora forever.

Chuckles rose from the motley
group sweating behind
Duvall and Flowers. Like a sheepish child, Dave
shrugged and grinned and shook his head.

Finally, he said over his
shoulder,
‘Boys, take your horses to the corral. Miss Ames here just
needs her feathers smoothed a little is all. Her and me’ll confer
privately, and I’m sure we’ll have this little misunderstandin’
straightened out in no time.’

As the others headed, snickering, for the
dilapidated corral near the buggy shed, Duvall climbed out of his
saddle and tossed his reins to Flowers. Then he turned to Cora,
smiled, and removed his hat. Still grinning, he slapped the hat
against his thigh, billowing dust, and shook his head as though at
a joke that tickled him no end.

‘
Yeah,
that was some night,’ Duvall said through a chuckle. ‘But if memory
serves, I apologized for that, Miss Cora.’

‘
You
can’t apologize for biting a girl’s toe off, Dave! Go away and take
your crew with you. You’re not wanted here.’

Dave looked at the short, squat
woman, her brown hair piled and fastened with barrettes atop her
head. The smile faded from his lips.
‘If memory serves, I gave her twenty
dollars and a watch. A gold watch with a picture of Mary Lincoln
inside!’

‘
The
watch wasn’t no toe, Dave. And the twenty dollars ain’t the goin’
rate for toes, neither.’

‘
You
don’t have the right spirit, Cora. Forgive and forget—that’s the
Christian spirit.’

‘
What
would you know about anything Christian, Dave?’

Duvall grinned again
sheepishly.
‘You got me there, Cora.’ Slowly, he climbed the
steps.

Cora shook her head.
‘No, Dave. This is
my place. I order you off the premises.’

He kept coming. She took two shuffling steps
backward, her chubby face mottled with anger.

‘
Let’s
go inside and talk about it, Cora.’