Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) (28 page)

‘
He
went after them,’ the man with the muttonchops said with a shake of
his head. ‘He and Senator Dawson. Imagine that. On
foot.’

‘
On
foot?’

‘
Yes.
They released our horses from the stock car and scattered them to
the four winds. The duke took after the ruffians with only his
Wimbley twelve-gauge. Senator Dawson went after him.’

‘
The
duke was addled by the clubbing they gave him,’ another man
added.

‘
Yes,
that explains it. Poor man. He and the duchess have only been
married a year, don’t you know? Poor man. What a ghastly place, the
West. What do you suppose lay in store for the duchess now? So
close to her twenty-third birthday . . .’

Prophet declined to answer that question.
They might keep her alive long enough to pick up the ransom money,
but she might not want to live that long....

Thoughts of the
duchess
’s
fate pointed Prophet’s concern back to Louisa. ‘Any of you men see
a blond-headed girl aboard? She’d have been wearing a gray skirt
and a brown poncho.’

The man with the muttonchops
blinked his eyes at Prophet puzzledly.
‘Well, yes ... yes ... the girl who
climbed down from the stock car.’ His voice was breathy with
wonder. ‘Who on earth was she?’

Prophet
’s heart picked up its beat. ‘Was?’
he exclaimed, whipping his head around the dead lying along the
train. ‘Where the hell is she?’

‘
They
took her, too. Her and Harrington’s poor, sweet niece.’

‘
Yes,
they took the young, pretty ones—poor dears,’ the man called
Harrington said, wagging his head and mopping at his sweaty
forehead with a silk handkerchief. ‘Oh, my dear sweat Evelyn,’ the
man complained, turning his gaze northward though the stalled train
impeded his view. ‘Packed off with the duchess ...’

‘
Shit!’ Prophet swore.

He couldn
’t help feeling more concerned
for Louisa than for anyone else out here. He sympathized with the
duchess and Harrington’s niece, but they were mostly just spoiled
Brits to him—haughty English fops buying up pieces of the West for
their sporting forays. He’d seen others like them, attended by
vice-presidents or wealthy senators, shooting game from their
private Pullman cars while the ladies sipped tea from
China.

Prophet gigged the Morgan up to
the engine, where a uniformed man was being tended by an older
woman in a torn, dusty gown and a ruddy-skinned, wizened gent with
a wide tie pierced with a diamond stick pin. Probably two of the
duke and duchess
’s attendants, Prophet thought.

‘
Are
you the engineer?’ the bounty hunter asked the uniformed
man.

The man nodded, glancing up
from his bullet-pierced arm.
‘You the law?’

‘
No,
but they should be on their way soon. You and your crew sit tight.
I’m going after the gang.’

The man sized up Prophet, then
said,
‘Well,
they shouldn’t be hard to follow. They headed northwest, and they
had three women with ‘em. They kidnapped the duchess for ransom,
don’t you know?’ The engineer swore, apologized to the lady
wrapping his arm, and returned his gaze to Prophet. ‘They’re also
pullin’ a wagon.’

‘
A
wagon?’

‘
Yeah,
they took a wagon off the train to carry all the booty they stole.
You know, trinkets and jewels and coins and whatnot....’

‘
Good,’ Prophet said, meaning he was glad the gang had a
wagon to slow them down. With both his horses tired out from the
ride from Fargo, he wouldn’t be able to follow them with any speed.
In fact, he’d have to give both mounts at least a fifteen-minute
breather before pursuing the gang at all.

With that consideration in
mind, he gigged the Morgan around the panting engine, to the other
side of the train. Dismounting, he tied the horses to one of the
passenger cars, filled his hat from his canteen, and fed the water
first to the Morgan, then to Mean and Ugly, who
’d been studying the black
horse with derision.

When both horses were watered,
Prophet donned his hat and looked around for the Red River
Gang
’s
tracks. They weren’t hard to find, even in the tough prairie sod: A
dozen horses and one wagon heading northwest.

Heading for what? Did they have a hideout
that way? If so, and if Prophet could penetrate it, would he be
able to rescue Louisa and the two British women?

One man against a small army?

Prophet sighed and shook his head, but the
urge to get moving made him itch all over. He had to give the
horses another few minutes of rest, however. Louisa and the British
gals were good as dead if his horses gave out. They probably were,
anyway, but Prophet figured if he could follow them to their
destination, the women would at least have a chance....

He thought of Louisa. How had
they ever gotten her subdued? They must have practically killed
her, because that would be the only way she would have gone
along
for
their ride. Unless she’d gone willingly ...

Prophet
wouldn
’t
have put it past her. She was just determined and careless enough
to get herself killed.

When Prophet felt the horses
had rested enough, he mounted Mean and Ugly and headed off along
the tracks of the Red River Gang, leading Louisa
’s Morgan. He’d ridden only
about twenty minutes or so, cantering and walking the horses so he
wouldn’t play them out, when he turned to see a rooster tail of
dust lifting in the distance toward the train.

Wondering who that could be, he kept the
horses to a fast walk, letting the rider catch up to him. When he
turned again ten minutes later, the rider had come within seventy
yards. He, too, was leading another horse, a feisty roan.

‘
Well,
now, what in the hell?’ Prophet carped to himself, yanking his dun
to a halt and staring back at the approaching, redheaded Mcllroy in
a snuff-colored Stetson.

‘
What
did you think I was going to do—sit around in a warm bath in
Bismarck?’ the young man said as he approached, reading the disdain
in Prophet’s expression. ‘I’m a deputy U.S. marshal, for
chrissakes. This is more my business than yours, Mr.
Prophet.’

Knowing there was no point
arguing about Mcllroy
’s presence and intention of tracking the gang,
Prophet said, ‘Did you get the story from the Brits?’

‘
That
they have the Duchess and two other women? Yep. I told the sheriff
about your suspicions before I left Fargo, so he and his deputies
should be along shortly. I doubt they’ll be much help, though.
We’re nearly to the Cass County line, the end of their
jurisdiction.’

‘
Good,’ Prophet said. ‘We don’t need any more dust kicked up
back here than we already got.’

Annoyed and confounded,
Mcllroy
’s
brows wrinkled and his freckled face flushed. ‘If you had your
druthers, you’d really rather track them alone?’

‘
If I
had my druthers I’d track them with a handful of hand-picked
military scouts or a couple regiments from the U.S. cavalry armed
with cannons—preferably from a Southern battalion. Anything less,
I’d just as soon go it alone. Nothing personal, but you’re just too
green.’

With that, Prophet neck-reined Ugly around
and continued riding at a fast canter.

Mcllroy caught up to him and
said,
‘I
think you judged me too quickly, Prophet, on the basis of one
mistake. I don’t need to ask you for another chance, because I’m
the one in authority here. But because you’re the one with more
experience, and because I for one don’t want to track these men
alone, I am asking you to give me one more shot at proving
myself.’

Prophet looked at the deputy,
who did not look at him but rode face forward, stiff-backed in his
saddle. Around his mouth and eyes, his face looked like rotten
beef. He didn
’t have to be here, Prophet thought. He could be on the
train back to Yankton with the bodies of his friends. You had to
give him something for his pluck, anyway.

‘
Okay,
okay,’ Prophet said, and turned forward in his saddle.

Staring northwest, he frowned. Something had
moved ahead of them.

‘
You
see that?’ he asked the deputy.

‘
Yep.
Two men afoot.’

‘
Oh,
shit,’ Prophet said, knowing who it was.

‘
What?’ Mcllroy said, reaching for his sidearm.

‘
Keep
it holstered.’

The two men were walking about
fifty feet apart, one behind the other. The first man was tall and
portly and carrying a shotgun, thick auburn locks bouncing on his
shoulders. The second was tall and slender and wearing a black suit
and coat, a fat necktie flopping back on his
shoulder. He was bald. Both men
were hatless.

Prophet and Mcllroy approached
the second man first. Looking exhausted, he was yelling at the
first man,
‘Duke! Duke! You must stop! We’ve no horses and there
are
Indians
about!’

The first man, the duke, yelled something
without turning around and kept walking, almost marching, his
shotgun barrel resting on his shoulder.

The sound of
Prophet
’s
and Mcllroy’s horses turned the second man around, fear etched in
the senator’s long, flushed face adorned with a gray spade beard.
‘Oh! Who ... what... ?’

‘
It’s
all right, Senator,’ Prophet said. ‘We’re friendly. We’re after the
hombres who took the duchess. What in the hell are you two doing
out here afoot?’

Prophet and Mcllroy had halted their horses
before the senator, who bent over with his hands on his knees,
trying to catch his breath. He looked like he was about to
expire.

‘
We
... he,’ the senator said, glancing at the duke who had stopped and
turned toward Prophet and Mcllroy, his brows crumpled with
curiosity. ‘He wanted to go after the savages who kidnapped his
wife. I just... I ran along to try to get him to stop. They’d kill
him for sure, and ...’

‘
Oh,
button your mouth, Andrew!’ the duke bellowed, walking quickly
toward Prophet with his bird gun still on his shoulder. ‘You just
came because I promised to invest in that beef-packing plant of
yours in Deadwood Gulch, and you thought you had to make a show of
fetching my wife or I’d pull out of the deal!’

‘
No!’
the senator rasped. ‘I came to fetch
you
back, Duke. What on earth do you think you can do
afoot, except get yourself scalped by Indians?’

The duke marched up to the
senator, brought his shotgun down off his shoulder, grabbed it by
the gold-plated receiver and forearm, and swung the stock soundly
against the senator
’s head. With a shocked cry, the senator went down like a
windmill toppled by lightning, arms flying.

‘
Never
could stand a coward,’ the duke said in his limey accent. ‘Couldn’t
stand ‘em in Delhi, and I can’t stand ‘em here.’

‘
Damn,’ Prophet intoned with a wince, staring down at the
idle senator. ‘You’re like to have killed him!’

‘
Who
are you?’

Prophet turned to the duke, who
was eyeing Prophet and the deputy suspiciously. Before the bounty
hunter could say anything, Mcllroy said,
‘I’m Ezekiel Mcllroy, U.S. deputy
marshal out of Yankton, Dakota Territory. I’ve been tracking the
Red River Gang for some time, and—’

‘
I
need your extra horse,’ the duke said matter-of-factly, heading for
the roan the deputy had tied to the tail of his black.

Mcllroy glanced at Prophet, who shook his
head vehemently.

‘
Uh
... I don’t think so, sir,’ the deputy said, trotting his horses in
a wide half-circle around the determined royal.

Red-faced with exasperation,
the duke aimed his bird gun at the deputy.
‘I want your extra horse. I need him
to fetch the duchess. I’d pay you for the animal and your trouble,
but that gang of hellions took everything I had on my person. Turn
the animal loose, I say. Turn him loose!’

‘
If
we’re gonna get your wife back, we need all four horses,’ Prophet
said. ‘Now put that cannon away, ye crazy limey!’

‘
Put
that gun away, Mister,’ the deputy intoned. ‘I told you who I am,
and if you mess with me further, I’ll be obligated to arrest
you.’

‘
My
wife is young and beautiful,’ the duke persisted. ‘If those men
have their way with her, I’ll... well, I cannot let that happen,
you see. My god! She’s the duchess! My bride! A virgin until the
night of our wedding! Now turn that horse loose, or I’ll shoot you
where you sit!’