Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) (5 page)

‘
Ask
away,’ he said absently, swallowing as he stared at the flesh
exposed by the open wrapper.

‘
The
door to the privy won’t shut all the way. I think the boards are
warped.’ She had a pained look on her face. ‘Would you mind taking
a look at it? I mean, since you don’t have any other plans for the
day and all?’

Prophet ran his eyes up and
down her scrumptious figure once more.
‘I would be more than happy to fix
anything you got ailing, Mrs. Cordelia Ryan.’

‘
Oh,
Lou!’ she said, running back to the bed and kissing his cheek.
‘You’re a dear!’ She went back to the door, began opening it, then
closed it again gently, half-whispering, ‘Until this evening, my
stallion ,..’

She blew him a kiss and left.

Thoroughly bewitched, Prophet rolled back on
the pillow with a big grin on his face.

As soon as
he
’d
polished off a big plate of ham and eggs and fried potatoes, and
washed it down with hot, black coffee, he got started on the privy
door, which was so badly warped by moisture that he had to remove
it, take it apart in the maintenance shed in the backyard, and
replace two boards and a handful of screws before putting it back
together and remounting the knob, which he also took apart and
oiled.

Before he put the door back on
its hinges, he gave it a fresh coat of paint. That done, something
didn
’t look
right. The problem was the fresh white paint on the door no longer
matched the dull, gray paint of the rest of the privy. It bothered
him to the point that he went ahead and painted the whole
privy.

‘
Now,
if that ain’t the best lookin’ two-holer in town, I’m not the
middle son of Homer and Minnie,’ Prophet said, stepping back to
admire his handiwork.

‘
Oh,
Lou?’

He turned. It was Cordelia
standing on the house
’s back porch. ‘Annabelle was cleaning a room
upstairs and found a cracked window.’ She thrust her lower lip out,
pouting.

Prophet sighed and offered a
wry smile.
‘Be right there.’

By the time Prophet had
replaced the window, repaired several pickets in the fence
surrounding the boarding house, plastered several cracks in the
parlor
’s
ceiling, cleaned the kitchen chimney, and hauled a load of food
staples back from the mercantile, stacking it all in the basement
storage room, he was ready to saddle Mean and Ugly and head back
out on the owlhoot trail for a little rest and
relaxation.

But he was rewarded that
evening by the finest meal—
young chickens roasted in white wine and butter
and a dessert of peach cobbler and ice cream—he’d ever eaten in his
life. And the coffee Annabelle brought him on the porch afterward,
where he sat smoking with the two older, chess-playing gents from
the evening before, was liberally laced with a sweet liquor—a
clandestine gift, he knew, from Cordelia.

The gift she gave him later was
just as clandestine but not nearly as subtle. Slipping into his
room after everyone else in the house was long asleep, the old
gents
’
snores resounding in the walls, she snickered into her hand, ripped
off her wrapper, threw herself atop him, and hissed, ‘Come, my
stallion—throw the blocks to your sweet Cordelia!’

He did, and paid for it again
the next day, so that by the time he
’d finished repairing the house buggy’s
left front wheel and greasing both axles, his back was squawking
like an old goose. Rather than head back into the boarding house,
where surely Cordelia or Annabelle would have another chore for
him, he washed at the outside pump, donned his hat, unrolled his
shirtsleeves, and walked south toward the business district. He
thought he’d have a beer and the free lunch in the town’s only
saloon, maybe even indulge in a game of five-card stud—if such
impious dalliance was allowed in Luther Falls.

On the way to the Sawmill Saloon, he saw
Sheriff Beckett sitting in the sun outside the jailhouse.

‘
Mr.
Prophet,’ the sheriff greeted him. ‘Haven’t seen much of you
lately. Thought maybe the widow had done run you out of town.’
Beckett laughed.

‘
No
... not yet,’ Prophet said with a baleful sigh, shoving his hands
in his pockets. ‘She’s workin’ on it, though.’

Bathing his face in the warm
midday sun, the sheriff glanced up at the bounty hunter.
‘Yeah, she can be
mighty tough. It’s either her way or no way. Think that might
be
why she
hasn’t remarried. Tends to scare men off with all her rules and
regulations. Why, you so much as clear your throat wrong over at
the big house, and she’ll read you from the book till you’re blue
in the face.’

‘
That
she will, Sheriff. That she will.’

‘
Been
toeing the line over there?’

‘
I
guess you could say that.’

‘
Must
be doin’ all right,’ Beckett mused, looking Prophet over
humorously. ‘Otherwise, she and ole Annabelle would have sent you
out on a long, greased pole.’ He laughed again and shook his
head.

‘
Yeah,
I guess I’m doin’ somethin’ right, Sheriff,’ Prophet grumbled with
an unreadable irony. ‘Say, how long do you think it’ll take for my
money to travel from Dodge?’

‘
Well,
it’s a fair piece, and this time of the year the roads can be a
little muddy. I’d say a week at the earliest.’

‘
A
week, eh?’ Prophet mused with an air of disheartenment. He’d
figured it would take that long but was hoping he was wrong. He
wanted to exit these parts before Cordelia decided she needed a new
roof. He didn’t think that even at his relatively youthful age he
could roof her house and grease her wheels at the same time. ‘I
reckon if it rains, or if there’s some official holdup, which there
usually is, it could be two or even three weeks before I can start
looking for my reward money.’

‘
I’d
say that’s about right.’

Prophet sighed.
‘Thanks, Sheriff.’
Favoring his back, he started toward the saloon.

‘
What’s your hurry?’ Beckett called after him. ‘The widow’s
treating you all right over there, isn’t she?’

Prophet gave the man a
dismissive wave and continued across the street to the Sawmill,
where he enjoyed the free sandwiches, pickled eggs, nickel beers,
and several three-for-a-nickel cheroots. There were no gamers,
however. Just two regulars—retired sawyers by their ratty
clothes
and
missing fingers—playing backgammon beside the woodstove. The
bartender fold Prophet the gamblers were still out chopping trees
and wouldn’t be in until after six or so.

‘
That’s all right,’ Prophet said, shoving his chair out,
extending his legs, crossing his ankles, and lacing his fingers
over his belly. He smiled at his third beer sitting before him,
beside his empty plate. ‘I’ll wait for ‘em right here.’

He was halfway into his fourth beer when he
heard a commotion down the street. A man yelled, a woman screamed,
and then two pistol shots sounded.

Prophet looked at the bartender, who was
sitting beside the chess players, reading the paper. The man had
looked up and was staring out the window with a curious frown.

‘
What
was that?’ Prophet said. In ranch country, it could’ve been cowboys
hoorawing the town, but since this was mainly a honyonker and
woodcutting area, and since the weekend was still three days away
...

‘
I
don’t know.’

Two more pistol shots split the midweek
somnolence, and Prophet got to his feet and walked to the door,
followed by the bartender in his sleeve garters and the two old
backgammon players. Across the street, the dentist stepped out of
his establishment to gaze around curiously, as did the blacksmith
and the barber and the little gray-haired lady who ran the fabric
shop.

They, like Prophet and the
others from the Sawmill, turned their gazes eastward down the
town
’s main
drag, where at least twenty men on horseback were milling around on
agitated horses before the mercantile. Two more men were on the
broad loading dock fronting the place. The two appeared to be
fighting with a longhaired girl, who screamed.

One of the men yelled something
and smacked the girl across the face. When the girl went limp in
his arms, he
carried her down the steps to the street, where the other
men were heeling their mounts back and forth before the place,
six-shooters drawn and raised above their heads.

Several squeezed off shots skyward, just
making noise.

‘
Now
what in the hell is that all about?’ the bartender said as he
scratched his noggin.

‘
Looks
like a damn holdup, if you’re askin’ me,’ Prophet said, all his
senses suddenly coming alive but not quite believing what he was
seeing.

‘
In
Luther Falls?’

‘
I
admit things look a whole lot more like Dodge City suddenly,
but...’ He was already walking down the street, instinctively
heading toward the fracas, his gaze on the men milling before the
mercantile.

‘
What
are you doing with the girl, Day?’ one of the horse backers
yelled.

‘
What
do you think I’m doing with her?’ another man returned as he
climbed into his saddle, hefting the girl in his arms like a feed
sack and throwing her over the horn.

‘
No!’
the girl cried. ‘No!’

An older woman ran out of the
mercantile, screaming,
‘You can’t take my baby! Please, no!
Nor

The man with the girl calmly
drew his revolver from his hip, raised it to his shoulder, aimed,
and fired. The gun clapped, smoke puffing. The woman who had run
halfway down the steps of the loading dock stopped suddenly as
though she
’d
forgotten something. She sat down and rolled to the
side.

The girl screamed.

That
’s when Prophet realized beyond a
shadow of a doubt that these men were highwaymen and that they were
not only robbing the mercantile, they were kidnapping the girl.
Here—in Luther Falls!

He
’d run half a block, his heart
pounding, when he saw the sheriff turn the corner on his left. Not
wearing his suit coat or hat, Beckett was carrying his shotgun.
He’d probably been eating lunch at home when he’d heard the
gunfire.

‘
Good
shootin’, Day!’ one of the horse backers shouted.

Day laughed and holstered his
gun.
‘Come
on, Dave, we got the money,’ he yelled at the store. ‘Leave the
candy alone!’ He laughed and shook his head.

‘
Yeah,
come on, Dave. Let’s skedaddle!’ another man yelled at the store
while several others shot their six-guns in the air.

Walking down the side of the
main drag opposite Beckett and a half block behind him, Prophet
reached for his revolver but grabbed only denim. His heart skipped
a beat when he realized the Peacemaker wasn
’t there. He’d hung it in his room at
the boarding house, having decided it would only get in his way
while he toiled for Cordelia.

Besides, who needed a gun in this idyllic
little berg?

The blunder mocked him now as he made his
way quickly toward the dozen gun-toting firebrands itching for
war.

He
’d pulled up at an awning post a
block from the mercantile when another man walked out of the store,
grinning and holding two big paper sacks in his arms.

‘
Hit
the mother lode, boys!’ he whooped, holding the bags
aloft.

‘
Come
on, Dave. We ain’t got all day.’

‘
What’s the hurry?’ Dave said as he took his reins from one
of the men riding horseback. ‘I say we see if there’s a gun shop in
town. I could use a new Smith & Wesson.’

Standing by the awning post as
other shopkeepers gathered on the boardwalks, mumbling, frightened,
and confused, Prophet gritted his teeth. These firebrands seemed to
think they could ride into town and do as they pleased. What was
here was theirs for the taking. They showed no fear whatsoever, and
very little urgency. If they knew there was a sheriff in town, they
certainly paid no heed
to the fact. Their guns were drawn, but mostly for
show and to make some noise.

The disregard these men showed for law and
order in Luther Falls could not have been lost on Sheriff Beckett,
whom Prophet watched creep to the side of a buckboard wagon parked
before the butcher shop, about a half block away from the
mercantile. Old Beckett laid the barrel of his barn blaster over
the side of the wagon box, taking aim.

‘
Don’t
do it, Beckett,’ Prophet thought, warning bells tolling in his
head. ‘There’s a dozen of them, and you’ve only got the two loads
in that farm gun.’