Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) (25 page)

‘
You
can open the window for the smoke, but what if the drinkin’ turns
you into a savage?’

Prophet snorted and went to
work on the quirley.
‘Don’t worry—I’m well aware of that knife and
six-shooter you’re packin’ under your skirt.’

There was a pause while Prophet finished
building his smoke and cracked the window. He lit the cigarette,
picked up the bottle, corked it, and took a swig. Balancing the
bottle on his knee with one hand, he smoked the quirley with the
other.

He frowned at her staring at
him.
‘How
does that work, anyway?’ he said, exhaling a long plume of
smoke.

‘
What?’

‘
How
are you carryin’ that knife and gun under your skirt? Don’t worry—I
ain’t gettin’ fresh. Just curious about your armaments, is
all.’

Louisa shrugged.
‘I got a gunbelt on
under my skirt. I cut slits in the skirt so I can retrieve the gun
or the knife pronto. The poncho covers the bulges.’

‘
Where
did you get such an outfit?’

‘
What—the gunbelt and knife? Stole ‘em off the first man I
killed.’

‘
A Red
River Ganger?’

‘
Yep.
Killed him with my pa’s twenty-gauge I fished out of the barn’s
ashes. Then I took the outlaw’s weapons and his horse—the Morgan
was his, too, the poor horse— and I camped for a month in the
Nations, and practiced my shootin’ and knife-throwin’. Pa was right
handy with both, since he’d fought in the Indian Wars, and I’d
picked up a few tricks over the years. I could shoot faster and
straighter than my brother, James.’

Prophet stared at her, took a
sip from the bottle, then
stared at her again. Frowning, he asked, ‘What are
you gonna do, Louisa, when all this is over?’

She stared at the wall straight
off the end of the bed, thinking. Then she slid her eyes back to
Prophet.
‘I
don’t know. What are you gonna do?’

‘
More
o’ the same. I do it for a living.’

A faint smile pulled at her
full, pink lips.
‘Well, then, maybe I will, too.’

Prophet finished his cigarette, then built
and smoked another while he sipped the whiskey. Finally, he flicked
the cigarette stub out the window and held the bottle up to the
light, scrutinizing the whiskey line. He took a final sip, corked
the bottle, and returned it to his saddlebags.

‘
Well,
I reckon,’ he sighed, stretching. He kicked out of his boots and
started unbuttoning his shirt.

‘
What
are you doing?’

‘
I’m
comin’ to bed.’

‘
I
told you the whiskey would turn you into a savage.’

Prophet looked around,
thoughtful.
‘I don’t feel so damn savage.’

‘
You
mean you’re just gonna sleep?’

‘
What
else would I do?’

‘
Ravage me.’

Prophet chuckled.
‘I done told you, I
ain’t in the ravagin’ mood.’

‘
I
thought all men wanted to ravage virgins.’

He was peeling off his denims
but stopped and looked at her under his brows.
‘You a virgin?’

‘
Of
course. I ain’t married, am I?’

Prophet snorted and kicked off
his jeans, leaving them bunched on the floor.
‘Figures.’

Prophet emptied the wash basin
in the thunder mug under the bed, then refilled it from the pitcher
and splashed water in his face. When he
’d dried himself on the towel hanging
on the stand, he stretched again, scratched his hairy chest through
his union suit, and headed for the other side of the
bed.

He crawled in, groaning and tired, and
fluffed his pillow. Then he lay back, drew the quilt and sheet up,
yawned, and closed his eyes.

After a minute, Louisa said
quietly in the silent room,
‘You can if you want to. I mean, I mind, of
course, but I reckon all men need it, so .. . since we’re workin’
together and all.’

He turned to her.
‘I can
what?’

She turned to him, blinking and
looking annoyed.
‘Ravage me.’

‘
I
’m too tired to ravage a virgin tonight. Maybe some other
time. Now go to sleep, and don’t forget to blow the lamp
out.’

Stunned and incensed but not quite knowing
why, Louisa stared at him lying there with his big, muscled arms
crossed over his broad, hairy chest which pulled the threadbare
union suit taut across his rounded shoulders.

‘
Fine,
then,’ she said, finally.

She got out of bed, stomped over to the
light, blew it out, stomped back to bed, and crawled under the
covers.

‘
Fine.’

THE NEXT MORNING, Louisa woke
with a start and reached for her revolver, but it was not where she
normally kept it when she slept, in the holster looped around her
saddle horn. Not only that, but she wasn
’t sleeping on her saddle, which
she’d done nearly every night since hitting the vengeance
trail.

She was in
Prophet
’s
hotel room.

Remembering that
she
’d looped
her shell belt and holster around the bedpost after returning from
the privy during the night, she grabbed the weapon from the holster
and thumbed back the hammer as she tossed a quick glance to her
left and saw that Prophet was gone, his covers thrown
back.

The knock sounded again.

She turned to the door, aiming
the revolver.
‘Who is it?’ she snapped.

A muffled voice sounded behind the door.

Scowling sleepily, Louisa threw back the
blankets, brushed her hair from her eyes, and headed for the door,
gun extended, wincing at the burn in her right calf.

‘
Who
is it?’ she repeated impatiently.

‘
Bath
water, ma’am.’

Louisa thought it over for
several seconds; she hadn
’t survived this long being gullible. Finally, she
turned the key in the lock and cracked the door. In the hall, a
black boy of about eight or nine stood holding a bucket of steaming
water. A white towel thrown over his shoulder, the boy stared up at
her wide-eyed. When he saw the gun Louisa had poked through the
crack, his eyes widened even more, and he shuffled back with a
start.

‘
Don’t
shoot me, missy! The gen’leman tol’ me to bring ya up some bath
water at seven o’clock sharp!’

‘
He
did, did he?’ Louisa said dryly, knowing the boy meant
Prophet.

‘
Yes’m. He give me two bits. Said to tell you he’d meet you
at eight-thirty at Hung Yick’s cafe for breakfast.’

‘
Did
he say where he’d be till then?’

‘
No’m.’

Louisa glanced up and down the hall, then
stepped back, drawing the door wide. The boy entered the room, set
the steaming bucket on the braided rug beside the bed, hung the
towel on a wall hook, grabbed the thunder mug by its handle, and
brushed past Louisa on his way back out, eyeing her warily.

When he was gone, Louisa closed
the door, sheathed her revolver, and regarded the steaming pail.
She hadn
’t
had an indoor sponge bath in a long, long time. In spite of being
slightly miffed by the bounty hunter’s presumption, she was
grateful for the hot water. It would indeed feel good to have a
bath.

The bounty hunter.

Where in the hell was Prophet, anyway? He
must have dressed and slipped off without a sound, for Louisa
prided herself on waking at the rustle of a pine cone falling a
hundred yards away.

That bed
must
’ve been
more comfortable than she’d first thought. Or had she felt safer
and thus more able to relax, with him near... ?

She repressed the idea, for
this was no time to start setting store by some down-at-heel bounty
man. But as she stripped out of the dusty clothes
she
’d slept
in and began sponging her naked body with warm water from the pail,
avoiding her bandaged calf, she couldn’t help thinking of him ...
the easy way he carried himself... that rueful glimmer in his eyes
... those big arms straining the seams of his threadbare union
suit. He’d shown gentleness and sensitivity, odd for a man, when
he’d cleaned her wound last night.

He did seem different,
didn
’t he
... than most of the other men she’d come to know and hate ...
?

When Louisa had finished her
slow, luxurious sponge bath, and dressed, she saw by her timepiece
that she still had forty-five minutes before she had to meet
Prophet at the Chinaman
’s place. Deciding to spend the time riding around
town looking for the Red River Gang’s target, she left the hotel,
ignoring the spiteful stare of the old biddy at the front desk, and
headed for the livery barn.

She rigged up the Morgan and
left her payment in the office, pleased that the drunk stableman
was nowhere to be found, and walked the horse up and down Broadway.
She found three banks and an express office, but none looked like
they
’d
provide a gang of venal cutthroats with the kind of stake she’d
heard discussed in Wahpeton.

She
’d just crossed to the south side of
the Northern Pacific tracks when she heard a train whistle, and
turned to see a locomotive panting into Fargo. A big bruiser of a
beast, it was, throwing black smoke and cinders every which way,
filling the air with its burning-coal stench, and making the ground
tremble under the Morgan’s feet.

Chuff! chuff! chuff!
it coughed as it
slowed, brakes squealing and couplings crashing. Trains were still
new enough to this region that they still attracted admiring stares
from people on the street, Louisa saw as she glanced around. But in
the faces of two old men with gray mustaches perched on the
mercantile’s loading dock, she thought she saw something more than
just mild esteem.

She followed the
men
’s
bright, wistful gazes back to the train, which was moving about
five miles per hour now as the locomotive approached the water tank
beyond the depot. She frowned, surprised to see that this was no
ordinary passenger train with weathered gray cars cramped with
gaunt-faced immigrants in homespun clothes and squawking chickens
and boisterous children hanging out the windows.

In fact, this was no immigrant train at
all.

Eminently grand, this one included five
passenger cars, a Pullman sleeper, and two stock cars between the
coal tender and the caboose. The passenger cars were a rich mauve
with yellow trim. Brass fittings and lanterns gleamed in the
climbing prairie sun. All the windows were nearly twice the size as
on any ordinary train, and behind the sparkling glass most of the
cars were as uncluttered as Mexican ballrooms.

At the rear of each passenger car, there was
an open bay area enclosed by brass rails trimmed in striped bunting
fluttering in the breeze. In one such open-air vestibule, ladies
dressed like queens in crinoline and lace sat holding multicolored
parasols over their feathered hats. In the bay area of the car
directly behind the one that carried the ladies, portly gentlemen
in silk top hats, derbies, and camel-hair frocks stood or sat,
smoking stogies as they regarded Fargo with expressions of mild
amusement. Several held goblets on their knees. One man wearing a
big, Texas-style hat with the brim pinned up on one side, said
something with a supercilious grin and a grand gesture indicating
the street before them. The others roared.

Soon the men
’s car passed beyond Louisa,
screeching to a halt before the depot. Stopping before her was the
second of the two stock cars, and peering through the slats she saw
horses. Thoroughbreds and Arabians, all.

The Morgan twitched its nose at
the stock car from within which whinnies and nickers issued along
with the smell of horse dung and alfalfa. As she stared at the car,
Louisa
’s
heart began beating resolutely against her sternum. Adrenaline
spurted in her veins. And then her heart was picking up until her
face grew hot and her blood was fairly racing.

Twisting back in her saddle, she looked
around the street. Then she reined the Morgan around and spurred
him over to the mercantile, where the two old townsmen still sat
under the awning drinking soda water from bottles.

‘
Excuse me, gentlemen, but can you tell me who’s on that
train?’

‘
Don’t
you read the papers, young lady?’ the man on the left said with
twinkling, washed-out eyes. ‘Why, that’s the Duke of Dunston-Abbey!
He’s the one in the Texas hat—ha! ha!’

‘
Who’s
the Duke of Dunston-Abbey?’

The old man shrugged and
glanced at his friend puffing on a corncob pipe. The second man
said,
‘Some
Britisher, they say. Part o’ some big syndicate that has ranches
all over the West. He’s headin’ to Montany with his wife the
duchess and some o’ their Britisher pals. ‘Parently he just bought
a brand-new ranch for the little woman. Her birthday’s coming up,
don’t ye know. Hee-hee-hee!’