Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) (30 page)

Her back cried out, feeling as
though it would surely snap like dry kindling, but Louisa ignored
it, more worried the man would feel the holstered gun on her hip.
Fortunately, he
’d thrown her over his left shoulder, so the gun was away
from him. Her bowie, however, was on her right hip, and another
problem altogether.

As he turned and jumped off the
wagon, Dayton Flowers laughed again, patted her bottom, and
said,
‘Dave,
I like this country girl. Her bottom feels nice and so do her
titties. I call dibs on this one.’

He headed for the cabin, and as
he walked across the yard and mounted the stoop, Louisa felt as
though her bones were being ground to powder. She grunted and
sighed with the pain, and Flowers seemed to enjoy it. He patted her
bottom again, and when he stepped into the dark, musty cabin, where
the smell of mice was so strong it nearly took
Louisa
’s
breath away, he twirled in a circle several times, stumbling and
almost falling.

Louisa cried out and Rowers laughed. Then he
stumbled toward the back of the place, kicked open a door, stooped
through the low opening, and tossed Louisa onto a narrow bed that
reeked of mildew. Her head hit the feeble, straw tick mattress
hard, bouncing off the wood-slatted frame beneath, and the pain was
so intense she saw red for several seconds.

Suddenly, as she blinked her eyes, trying to
see something in the black room, she was aware of Dayton Flowers
kneeling beside her. She could smell the rancid sweat of the man,
hear his labored breathing and his chuckles.

‘
Let
me see what you got here, little miss,’ he said, brusquely reaching
down the neck of her tunic and blouse and roughly fondling her
breasts. His coarse hands scraped her and chafed her, and she set
her jaws against the pain, fighting the tears she felt welling from
her eyes.

She wanted to beg him to stop
but would not, could not let herself do that. She
wouldn
’t
give him the satisfaction of knowing how terrified she’d
become.

He stopped, finally, and removed his hands,
when another man shuffled through the doorway, grunting as though
carrying something heavy.

‘
Day,
where should I put the queen of England here?’ The man’s voice was
loud and harsh in the quiet room.

‘
Just
throw her anywhere. There’s only one bed, and I’ve given it to the
country girl with the nice teats. The queen can slum it with the
mice.’

‘
Okay,’ the other man said.

There was a loud thump and a
scream as the duchess was dropped on the floor. She began bawling
then and did not stop when another man banged his head on the low
doorway and cursed savagely as something else hit the floor with a
thump and a female scream. That must have been the other girl. She
gave several more loud, fervent screams, and as the floorboards
jumped and rattled, Louisa figured that the man
who
’d banged
his head on the door frame was kicking the girl into the room,
cursing all the while.

Above the cries of the women,
Dayton Flowers said,
‘We’ll be back for some fun later on. First, we’re
gonna get us some grub and rest. You girls might wanna tidy up a
bit for the menfolk.’

He and the other two men laughed and
chuckled and jabbed each other mockingly, then went out and slammed
the door.

Dust and what sounded like mud
chunks sifted down from the rafters. Wings beat over
Louisa
’s
head, and she heard a bird’s frightened chirps. Lifting her head to
see the window in the wall about ten feet off the end of her cot,
she saw the wing-flapping silhouette of the bird as it tried to
make its way through a broken pane. With a screech and a rattle of
glass, it was gone, its exasperated cries diminishing as it fled
this hellish hollow.

Envying the bird, Louisa lay
back on the cot, the pain in the back of her head slowly subsiding.
Ignoring the weeping of the other two women and the growing
cacophony of the men entering and beginning to make themselves at
home in the cabin
’s main room, she tried to get her fear under control
enough to figure out a plan.

There was a window in the wall
before her. She could tell by the moonlight slanting into the room
from behind
her that there must have been a window back there, as
well.

Escape routes, they were—if she could get
her arms and feet untied....

She jumped when a gun barked in the other
room. She tensed, her heart leaping and pounding painfully against
her breastbone. The gun barked again, and she held her breath,
listening.

‘
Damn!’ a man cried, laughing. ‘Did you see that? A
skunk!’

‘
Did
you get it, Dave?’

‘
Think
I nicked it before he got out through that hole there.’ Boots
scuffled and chairs scraped the floor. Duvall’s voice again:
‘Millen, get some boards from the lean-to, and cover that hole.
Fuckin’ skunks!’

The main door opened and closed, and the
voices settled to a low din. Shortly, pots and pans clattered, and
the smell of a cook fire filtered into the tiny room in which
Louisa lay on the cot, listening and thinking, trying to wriggle
her wrists free of the rope binding them together behind her
back.

If she could only free her
hands, she could untie the other two women and they could flee
through one of the windows. At the very least,
she
’d have
access to the revolver still secured to the holster on her
hip....

For an hour, she worked at
wiggling her hands free of the ropes, her shoulders and arms aching
with the effort, her back and neck going numb. Finally, she had the
rope loose enough to slip the knuckles of her right hand through.
She
’d just
accomplished the maneuver when boots pounded suddenly, and the door
opened.

‘
Hello, girls,’ Handsome Dave Duvall said, standing in the
open doorway, silhouetted against the lighted main room behind
him.

Louisa froze, shuddering.
She
’d freed
her hands from the ropes but she knew she didn’t have time to go
for her revolver. She might—might!—get off one shot, but only one.
She’d be dead soon after.

‘
We
had us a little bet,’ Duvall said. ‘Dayton here won. He’ll be
taking you out to the lean-to, Little Miss. Me, I’m gonna stay
right here’—he swung a bull’s-eye lantern around from behind him,
holding it high before him, lighting the cramped room—’and have me
a little fun with the little English girl.. . while the duchess
watches. Hee-hee-hee.’

Suddenly, he stepped back and
sideways, and Dayton Flowers stepped around him and into the room.
Giving a whoop, Flowers bent down and pulled Louisa over his
shoulder and carried her through the door. Pretending her hands
were still tied, Louisa hung down Rowers
’ s sweat-damp back, glancing around
at the men sitting around the room, drinking whiskey and smoking
and grinning at her.

If she
couldn
’t get
away from Dayton Flowers, she’d have to endure each one of them, in
turn, for the next several hours. The thought was as raw as the
image of her dying mother and sisters, and she turned her mind away
from it and toward the hope that once she was outside, she could
somehow escape Dayton Flowers, and run away to seek help for the
other women.

Rowers was across the room and on the stoop
in three or four long strides. He stepped off the stoop, stumbling
from drink, and headed across the dark yard to the lean-to. Once
inside, he bent down, and Louisa fell off his shoulder into the
hay. It was a soft landing, and she lay there, staring up at Rowers
towering over her, breathing hard and balling his fists.

Soft, white moonlight angled through the
sashed window to his left, limning the side of his face and
shoulder. Finally, he doffed his hat, tossed it aside, and
unbuckled his gunbelt.

‘
We’re
gonna have us a good time out here, sweet girl. Yes, sir—just you
an’ me.’ His voice was breathy with lust; Louisa could smell the
fetid odor of whiskey on his breath. Combined with his sweat
stench, it was enough to make her retch.

As he hurriedly undressed,
kicking off his boots, Louisa snaked her free left hand out from
under her—slowly, carefully, so Flowers wouldn
’t detect her movement. She
wiggled the hand through the slit in the left side of her skirt,
but stopped suddenly, clipping a horrified grunt when she realized
her knife scabbard was empty!

The knife must have fallen out, fallen
through the slit in her skirt, when Rowers had been carrying her
across the yard.

Damn! Now she had no choice but to use her
gun, which she could feel was still there in its holster, despite
the fact of its noise.

She
’d fished it out of its holster and
through the skirt slit just in time, shoving the Colt into the hay
only a few inches to her right, away from the moonlight, her hand
remaining on the grips. Flowers had just ripped out of his
underwear, tossing the garment aside, and turned to her nude,
silhouetted against the window, the moonlight laying a sheen across
the sweat-slick hair curling off his chest, left arm, and
thigh.

Rubbing his hands together
briskly, he said,
‘Now ole Dayton’s gonna show you a time you won’t soon
forget!’

His knees bent as he stooped toward her. She
removed the gun from the hay, aimed it straight at the dark center
of his chest, and pulled the trigger.

The gun jumped and barked, the flames
lighting up the lean-to for a split wink and filling the air with
powder smoke. Rowers gave a jerk and a low grunt, and froze. He
grunted again and sagged to his knees.

‘
Wha—what the hell?’ He lowered his chin to look at his
chest. ‘What the hell? You shot me?’

‘
Think
I’d let a greasy polecat like you grunt around between my legs?’
Louisa castigated the man as she scrambled to her feet, her muscles
and legs moving sluggishly, painfully, and ran to the
door.

Leaving Flowers to die, resisting the urge
to finish him with another shot to the head, she flung open the
squeaky lean-to door and cut a look at the cabin. The other men had
heard the shot and were already spilling onto the stoop, guns drawn
and yelling.

Louisa
’s face flushed with panic and grief.
Oh god, oh no . . .
jeepers!

She ran around the lean-to and into the
woods behind, hearing the men behind her calling for Dayton. Her
gun in her hand, she jumped deadfalls and wove between Cottonwood
trees and rocks, pushed through spiky bramble, making her way
toward the river murmuring in its bed only a few yards away.

If she could get into the water, she might
have a chance.

‘
Hey,
you guys,’ a man’s voice boomed behind her. ‘I can hear her in the
brush back here. Come on!’

She ran harder, but she knew it
wasn
’t fast
enough. Her legs and feet were still cramped from the wagon ride,
the muscles sluggish and jittery. Behind her, the men’s yelling
grew louder and louder, and then she was hearing brush thrashing
and twigs snapping under pounding feet.

‘
Girl!
I know you’re back here! You’re gonna die, girl!’

It was Dave Duvall, his voice
high-pitched with lunatic exasperation. It turned
Louisa
’s
knees even weaker, and they almost buckled. But then she pushed
through another bramble patch and saw the river winking silver in
the moonlight.

She made for it and started across, her
heart sinking when she saw it was not deep enough to carry her
downstream. In fact, it barely covered her ankles!

She ran as hard and fast as she
could, sliding on rocks and tripping over snags. Behind her, the
sound of pounding boots grew louder, until she knew at least one of
the
gang
members was closing. She was certain of it when she heard Dave
Duvall.

‘
You
can run but you can’t hide, girl!’

His voice was so loud and filled with such
belligerence it made her eardrums shudder and her breath catch in
her throat. He gave a whoop, and then she heard him splashing
across the creek.

Realizing she
couldn
’t
escape him, she stopped and turned, clawing her revolver out of her
skirt. She raised it, aimed at Duvall’s tall, dark, running figure
outlined by the moonlight, and fired twice. As she did, Duvall gave
a mocking whoop and dove to his left, dodging both shots, which
made wet spanging noises as they ricocheted off half-submerged
stones.

He drew his own gun and fired
quickly, the slug whistling past Louisa
’s ear. Giving a cry, she wheeled,
almost falling in the creek, and ran up the opposite bank, bulling
through shrubs, which caught on her clothes, catching and tearing
them, yanking her hair.

When she
’d run several more yards, she
waited until she saw Duvall again—a quickly moving shadow amidst
the shrubs—and fired three quick rounds. Not waiting to see if
she’d hit her mark, she turned and ran through the trees. Suddenly,
the ground gave way beneath her—she’d come to an old creek bed—and
she fell hard and rolled to the creek’s rocky, brushy bottom,
losing her gun in the process.