Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) (29 page)

Prophet ground his spurs into
Ugly
’s
flanks, and the horse bolted forward, hammering the duke with a
well-muscled shoulder. The duke cried out as his shotgun lifted,
booming skyward, and fell face down under Ugly’s hooves.

‘
Come
on, Deputy!’ Prophet called to Mcllroy. ‘We’re burnin’
daylight!’

Caught off guard by
Prophet
’s
maneuver, Mcllroy stared dazed at the trampled, cursing Brit.
Seeing Prophet galloping westward without looking back, Mcllroy
spurred his own horse after the bounty hunter.

When he caught up to Prophet,
he said,
‘Shouldn’t we see if he’s seriously hurt?’

As if in reply, a boom lifted on the wind
behind them. Both men turned to see the duke lowering his shotgun
from his shoulder as powder smoke puffed around his head. He yelled
something as he breeched the gun to reload.

To Mcllroy, Prophet
said,
‘You
go ahead if you want, but he looks all right to me!’

Then he lowered his head and spurred Ugly
northwest at a sod-churning run.

‘
OH,
NO! OH. God! For the love of the crown, help me! Help us all! We’re
going to perish, certainly!
’

With her hands tied behind her
and her ankles tied before her in the bouncing wagon box, Louisa
turned to the woman who
’d been yelling and sobbing off and on since
they’d been taken from the train a good half hour
before.

‘
Be
quiet,’ Louisa warned the duchess. ‘You’re giving me a
headache.’

‘
Ohhhhh!’ the duchess sobbed, her head between her upraised
knees.

She was tied as Louisa was,
and, like Louisa, sat with her back against the
driver
’s
box, facing the wagon’s rear. With her rich, brown tresses hanging
down from the once-taut coils piled atop her aristocratic head, and
her blue silk gown torn and soiled, she didn’t look much like a
duchess anymore.

She lifted her head, turning to
Louisa with her tear-streaked face beseechingly.
‘I’m going to die!
Don’t you see? They’re going to kill us all, and I’ll never see my
dukey or little Timmy or Mum or Poppa or Gran—ever again!
Ev-er!’

‘
Don’t
worry. They’re not gonna kill us for a while yet,’ Louisa said
under her breath, regarding the dull-eyed men plodding along behind
the wagon. ‘They’re gonna have plenty of fun with us first—you can
bet the pot on that.’

‘
Ohhhhh!’

Louisa
’s flip tone belied her fear, the
shudders that leapfrogged her spine every two minutes or so. Her
hands and feet were bound, and she was in the firm, deadly grasp of
the gang who’d murdered and ravaged her family. They were all about
her, in fact—Handsome Dave Duvall and Dayton Flowers included,
heading up the pack before the wagon.

What, oh what, had ever made her board that
train!

Louisa turned her head away
from the shrieking duchess, and saw the other woman the gang had
kidnapped, sitting on Louisa
’s left. Slightly younger than the
duchess—probably Louisa’s age—the young woman had passed out again,
and her head lolled back on her shoulders. Little ringlets of
flaxen-blond hair hung to her small, powder-white breasts only
partially concealed by her dainty pink gown. Her delicate,
small-boned face was drawn and pale and dust-layered, and her fine
jaw bounced slightly with the wagon.

Louisa was glad the girl was
unconscious. She couldn
’t have endured the screams of both women at
once.

Looking around again, Louisa regarded the
dusty riders surrounding the wagon—a hawkish, mean, ugly, unshaven
lot of gun toughs. The Red River Gang they were, and this was the
first time Louisa had seen them all together up close.

They rode their saddles with
lazy arrogance, slouching, smoking, and squinting against the dust
and the westering sun, confident in their villainy. It was their
aim, Louisa knew from what she
’d overheard in their conversation with the duke
earlier, to hold the duchess for ransom, until the duke could come
up with fifty thousand dollars.

Where and when the duke was
supposed to make the drop, Louisa hadn
’t heard; she’d been too far from the
men and still woozy from the braining she’d taken when the train
had stopped so suddenly following the explosion that had ripped up
the rails.

The part about the drop
didn
’t
matter, anyway. Louisa knew that either she or the Red River Gang
would be turned toe down long before any of that occurred. She
still had her gun under her skirt, as well as her knife. None of
the gang members had thought to check the pretty little girl with
the honey-blond hair for hideout weapons. As soon as one or more of
them tried to ravage her as they’d ravaged her mother and sisters,
Louisa would make them damn sorry they hadn’t been more
cautious.

She turned to her left and saw that one of
the dust-soaked riders was staring at her, a lewd light in his
eyes.

‘
What
are you looking at?’ she asked him haughtily, covering her fear
with a taut upper lip.

‘
You,
sweet girl.’

‘
You’re not my type, sir, nor me yours.’

To the man riding beside him,
he said,
‘This one here’s not only perty, but she’s got spunk. Did
you hear how she said that?’ The man lifted his chin and scrunched
his eyes. ‘‘You’re not my type, sir, nor me yours.’’ He slapped his
thigh and guffawed.

‘
Yeah,
I saw. I like the duchess, myself. I don’t know why we took this
one when we had all those rich Englishers to choose
from.’

‘
‘
Cause this one was pertier than them Englishers,
and cause she tried to knock Dayton’s block off when he grabbed her
out o’ that car. Ha! Ha! How could anyone resist a girl like
that!’

‘
I
like the duchess myself,’ the second man repeated, wiping his mouth
with his shirt cuff. He looked at the girl to Louisa’s left. ‘And
this girl here—her titties are about to jiggle out of that little
dress she’s wearin’—like little white pears!’

‘
What
the hell are you two doin’?’ Handsome Dave Duvall asked, slowing
his horse to let the wagon catch up to him. When he was riding even
with the box, between the other two gang members, he said, ‘I told
you boys to leave these girls alone.’

‘
Ah,
come on, Dave,’ the first man said. ‘We’re just lookin’! Besides
that, I don’t see no harm in havin’ some fun.’

‘
If I
turned you boys loose on these women now, they’d be dead before
nightfall. Besides that, I don’t want any of you ever touching the
duchess, understand? Her husband ain’t gonna pay the ransom to get
her back if she’s defiled.’

‘
Okay,
Dave,’ the second man said. ‘But what about these other two? I
mean, we brought them along for the fun of it, didn’t
we?’

‘
That’s right, Grogan,’ Duvall said with a grin. ‘And you
can have all the fun you want with ‘em tonight, after we reach the
cabins. In the meantime, we’re gonna ride like hell,
understand?’

‘
You
think someone’s followin’ us, Dave?’

‘
Doubt
it, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry, now isn’t it,
Chess?’

‘
I
reckon,’ Chess allowed.

Duvall gave the two men a wink
and turned to Louisa with a thoughtful frown.
‘Who in the hell are you,
anyway, honey? What were you doin’ on that train with all those
uppity Englishers?’

Thinking fast, Louisa
said,
‘I...
I was hired to help the cook. You know, to peel potatoes and serve
coffee and such. Please, mister, won’t you let me go?’ She lowered
her head and feigned a sob, not a difficult job under the
circumstances. ‘I’m so frightened.’

Duvall sidled his horse to the
wagon, nudging Grogan
out of his way. Keeping pace with the bouncing
contraption, he smiled lustily at Louisa, reached down, and took
her chin in his hand. He baldly appraised the two bulges in her
tunic, then stared into her eyes, grinning with only his mouth. His
gaze was dark, his cheeks coloring slightly. A wintery chill sent a
shiver the length of her body. The duchess leapt into another
crying jag, and Duvall, wincing at the ear-piercing shrieks,
straightened in his saddle and galloped back up to the front of the
pack.

Grogan snickered and turned to
Louisa.
‘Just better hope he don’t go for your toes, Miss—that’s
all I got to say!’

Grogan elbowed the man called
Chess, adding,
‘Poor Cora Ames. Ha! That poor woman’s gonna be walkin’
with a limp till the day she meets St. Pete. Ha! Ha!’

He and Chess shared another
round of laughter, then gradually turned their attention to
cigarette-building. When they
’d drifted off, Louisa looked behind her and over
the riders following the wagon. She hoped she’d see a sign of
Prophet back there, but all she saw was more of this godforsaken
prairie, creased here and there with shallow ravines and studded
with occasional cottonwoods.

Had the bounty hunter found her
horse at the train station in Fargo, and realized her ploy? She
didn
’t know.
Even if he had found the horse, it didn’t mean he’d guessed she’d
hopped the duke’s train. But she hoped so. If not, she was all
alone out here, with only the single Colt on her hip and the bowie
knife on her belt—against twelve of the owliest-looking savages
she’d ever laid eyes on.

And then there was Handsome Dave Duvall, as
square-jawed handsome as he was evil.

The hell of it was, she
didn
’t think
she’d have done such a thing unless she’d known she had Prophet to
back her up. Maybe she’d been better off back when she was
depending only on herself....

Maybe it was better if she always just rode
alone.. . .

One thing she knew for sure, though—if she
was going under the green, she was damn sure going to take a
handful of the Red River Gang with her.

She rested her head on her
knees and tried squirming into a more comfortable position. But
there was no such thing as comfortable when your wrists were tied
behind your back, your ankles were tied before you, and you were
riding a wagon straight to hell
....

IN SPITE OF the
wagon
’s
constant jarring and pounding, Louisa fell into a doze. She snapped
out of it when the buckboard suddenly stopped. She jerked her head
up, looking around.

Night had fallen. They were in a hollow in
the hills through which a stream or a river coursed, through tall
cottonwoods silhouetted against a pale, rising moon.

Bringing her gaze lower, she saw what looked
like a lean-to attached to a log corral. To her left, she saw a sod
cabin with an extension made from milled lumber. It was a dark,
rambling place that smelled of dank earth and rotten wood and mouse
droppings, and Louisa shrank from it like she would a dungeon
tended by ogres.

‘
We’re
home, my lovelies,’ came a voice out of the darkness. A figure
moved toward the wagon, and Louisa recognized Dave Duvall. ‘Time to
dismount and enter our humble abode. Admittedly, it isn’t much, but
then, we don’t get many visitors out here.’ He chuckled, pleased
with himself.

Louisa saw that the other men
were dismounting their
horses, ripping the tack from the animals, and
turning them into the corral. They moved slowly as though weary
from the hard ride.

As for herself, Louisa
wasn
’t sure
she could move. Her butt and legs were numb, the small of her back
felt as though a nail had been driven through it, and what hadn’t
gone to sleep ached from all the jarring. In addition, her face was
badly wind- and sunburned, and her eyes were full of
grit.

She nudged the duchess,
who
’d fallen
asleep against Louisa’s arm. The other girl was curled up in the
corner between the driver’s box and the left sideboard. The duchess
gave a startled grunt and lifted her head.

‘
What
is it... oh ... no!’

Several men, including Dayton
Flowers, had now gathered around the wagon—dark figures moving
wearily but with lascivious grins bunching their cheeks and
bringing snickers up from their throats. Louisa
’s temples throbbed with fear,
and her throat was dry. She tried to stand, but fell back against
the driver’s box.

‘
I
can’t,’ she said.

‘
Day,
help the ladies,’ Duvall said.

‘
Be my
pleasure, Dave!’ Flowers replied, climbing heavily into the wagon
box with a witch’s cackle. Ignoring the women on either side of
her, he went right for Louisa, bent down, grabbed Louisa’s arm, and
brusquely tossed her over his shoulder, as though she were nothing
but a sack of seed corn.