Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) (9 page)

‘
Shoulda thought of that before you raided Luther Falls,’
Prophet yelled over his shoulder, kicking Mean and Ugly into a
gallop.

Following the tracks of the four horses, he
traversed a grassy swale and splashed through a slough, scaring up
ducks and geese. A few minutes later, he came to a railroad bed on
which no tracks had yet been laid, and followed it west until,
mounting a rise, he saw several buildings, including a brick depot
lined out below.

Heeling the dun toward the
fledgling town the railroad surveyors
had probably platted last summer,
Prophet pulled his shotgun over his chest and worried a thumb over
the hammers. He entered the town at a slow walk, eyeing the
buildings still smelling of pine resin. Seeing the five horses,
including a black Morgan, tied before the two-story, high-fronted
structure touting itself as the Philadelphia Hotel, Prophet reined
Ugly that way, dismounted, and tied him to the rack’s far
end.

‘
Now
don’t bite anybody,’ Prophet scolded the horse, turning to the
building’s door.

Removing the thong over the
hammer of his .45 and holding the shotgun across his belly, he
opened the door and stepped inside, raking his eyes quickly around
the long, narrow room. In the shadows before him, about twenty
yards away, three hard-looking gunmen stood along the bar, facing
the wall to Prophet
’s right. Facing the toughs was the bartender. They’d all
turned their heads to look at Prophet, and the expressions on the
blunt faces of the hard cases were both curious and
guarded—especially when they saw the barn blaster hanging from the
lanyard around the bounty hunter’s neck.

Prophet took them all in, watching their
hands. Above him, he heard something thumping the ceiling and the
muffled sounds of a girl or young woman protesting what could only
have been the advances of a man. There was the sound of a slap and
a shrill cry.

Prophet smiled.
‘Sounds like
someone’s havin’ a good time, anyway.’

‘
That’s just the whore,’ one of the men at the bar
explained. ‘When she’s drunk, she likes it a little rough’s
all.’

‘
I
see,’ Prophet said. ‘Would you bring me a shot and a beer?’ he
asked the barman. He turned and sat down at the nearest table,
removing his hat and tossing it on the table before him.

Without saying anything, the
barman set a shot glass on the counter and uncorked a whiskey
bottle. The three
toughs were scrutinizing Prophet through slitted eyes. One
man eyed the shotgun with a half smile on his face. He was a
fiery-eyed little terrier with sandy blond hair falling out of his
slouch hat. His right hand was on his gun butt, and Prophet saw
that he’d removed the safety thong from the hammer.

It was fairly obvious why he
was here, he supposed, armed for bear as he was. These three
shouldn
’t be
much trouble, however, grouped up along the bar. He’d wait for his
drink and for one of them to make the first move....

The fiery-eyed little terrier
said tightly,
‘What’s the matter—you don’t want to stand at the bar and
drink with us?’

Prophet smiled at him.
‘No, I
don’t.’

The others
didn
’t say
anything. The barman brought the beer and the shot, setting them on
the table before Prophet and collecting the coins the bounty hunter
had tossed down by his hat. The man moved quickly, nervous about
getting caught in a crossfire. In a moment, he was behind the bar,
backed up to the mirror, his uneasy gaze sliding between Prophet
and the three men before the mahogany.

Overhead, the sounds of the fight had
died.

‘
That
ain’t very nice,’ one of the men at the bar said.

‘
Sorry,’ Prophet said, lifting the shot glass to his lips
and tossing back half the whiskey. ‘Didn’t mean to hurt your
feelings. It’s just that, well’—he set the glass down and looked at
the three from under his brows—’I never cottoned to drinkin’ with
wormy dog shit.’

Upstairs, someone screamed.
Prophet couldn
’t tell at first if it was the girl or the man. That’s how
shrill the scream was. When it became obvious the long, echoing cry
belonged to the man, the three at the bar slid their eyes to each
other, befuddled. The cry was so enduring, expressing such pain and
horror, that it put even Prophet on edge.

‘
Sounds like your friend’s getting more than what he paid
for up there,’ Prophet said at last.

‘
Benny, go see,’ the little man ordered.

‘
What
about him?’ Benny said, eyeing Prophet.

‘
Forget him for now,’ the little man returned. ‘Go see what
in the hell’s wrong with Barry.’

Upstairs, the cry seemed to
grow even louder.
‘Ahhhhhhh! No! Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
Nooooooooo-hoh-hoh-hoh!’

Wincing with apprehension,
Benny sidled away from the group and walked to the stairs at the
back of the room.
‘Barry, what the hell’s happenin’ up there?’ he yelled.
Receiving only more yelling in reply, he placed a hand on the
railing and started up the stairs.

Meanwhile, the two other men
stared at Prophet, hands on their guns.
‘Probably just stubbed his toe,’ the
little man said.

‘
That
can sure grieve ye,’ Prophet replied.

It was not the little man who
drew first, but the man standing to his right. He crouched of a
sudden, bringing his six-shooter up and out of its holster. He took
too much time, however. All Prophet had to do was thumb back the
shotgun
’s
hammers, which he did, turn the barrel a little, and trip the right
trigger.

The gun
’s enormous bark was followed by a
loud yelp. The gunman jerked so far backward that he smacked the
back of his head on the bar top, breaking his skull with an audible
crack. At the same time, the terrier crouched and drew. He, too,
was too slow, and a half second later he lay on the floor across
his friend, their blood mingling and running in several thick
streams across the warped wood floor.

A shot sounded upstairs. A man yelled, and
then two more shots followed in quick succession. Something hit the
upstairs floor so hard that the hanging lamps danced, swaying
shadows.

Prophet looked at the ceiling,
then at the barman.
‘You want any of this?’ he said, nodding at the two dead
men on the floor.

The barman shook his
head.
‘I
just serve ‘em liquor— that’s all.’

‘
Smart
man,’ Prophet said.

He breeched the shotgun and replaced the
spent shells. Then he scraped his chair back, stood, stepped over
the dead men, and walked to the stairs. Grabbing the newel post, he
gazed up uneasily, the shotgun in his right hand.

He sighed and started up the stairs, taking
one step at a time. He tried to figure out what in the hell had
been going on up there, but nothing washed.

When he made the landing, he paused, brought
the shotgun up tighter to his side, extending the barrel before
him. Slowly, he poked his head around the corner, gazing up the
last flight of stairs to the second story.

No one was there. He could hear
a man
’s
muffled groaning. The air was fetid with gunpowder.

Prophet started climbing again, one step at
a time, hearing the groans and the creaking of the steps under his
boots. He was halfway to the top when a hatted figure suddenly
appeared with a gun.

‘
Die,
devil! Die!’ rose a girl’s shriek, followed by three swift
gunshots.

Prophet ducked and threw himself to the side
as one bullet ripped his hat off and another singed his cheek.
Losing his footing, he fell back down the stairs, hearing the whine
of a bullet slicing the air over his head and chunking into the
landing wall, at the foot of which he piled up like dirty
clothes.

‘
Lady,
hold on, goddamnit!’ Prophet yelled, scrambling to his feet. ‘I
ain’t one o’ them!’

He looked up the stairs. A
fair-faced girl stood there in a black, round-brimmed,
bullet-crowned hat and a tattered wool poncho. Blond hair fell over
her shoulders, but what
interested Prophet most was the fact that she was
busy reloading her silver-plated revolver.

‘
Hold
your skirts, kid—I ain’t one o’ them!’ he yelled again as he
started up the stairs, tripping in his haste and pushing himself
off his hands.

The girl thumbed the last
cartridge into the cylinder and was bringing the gun up, thumbing
back the hammer, as Prophet reached her. Knocking the gun aside
with his left hand, he bulled into her, throwing her backward off
her feet. He went down on top of her and tried wrestling the gun
out of her
iron like grip. She cursed and punched him with her left
fist, hard.

‘
Goddamn you! Goddamn you!’

Flinching and cowering, Prophet
crawled up her body and gained his knees. Finally, he managed to
restrain her left arm with his right knee. It took both his hands
and the strength of Goliath to peel her fingers open and to finally
remove the revolver. When he did, flinging it away, she erupted
with a whole new string of curses, and her knees went to work,
pummeling his back. Her right hand came up, thrashing him and
opening a cut on his
lip.

‘
Goddamn it!’ he complained, lowering his head against the
renewed onslaught and pinning her right fist to the floor with his
left knee.

Now he was high enough on her body that her
knees could no longer reach him. She still writhed beneath him, but
to no avail. Her face was red with hate and anger, tears of
heart-searing rage watering her hazel eyes. He held on and waited
for her to wear herself out.

Which she eventually did, but it took
awhile. Finally, her muscles relaxed and her eyes focused on him
through an acrimonious haze.

He said,
‘Will you listen to reason
now?’

She lifted her head and
scrunched her eyes up angrily.
‘Do I have a choice?’

He climbed to his feet, her gun
in his right hand.
‘Ow,’ she said, sitting up and massaging her wrists. She
looked at him accusingly. ‘If you ain’t one o’ them, who are
you?’

‘
Lou
Prophet. Bounty hunter. I was in Luther Falls when they robbed the
mercantile. Been tracking the group till these four broke off and
headed here.’

He looked down the hall behind
him and saw the body of the man who
’d come up looking for Barry. Prophet
looked at the girl and jerked his thumb at the dead man. ‘Your
work?’

The girl
didn
’t reply
to this. ‘You take care of the other two downstairs?’

‘
Yup.
What happened to... ?’ Prophet moved down the hall, at the end of
which was an open door. He stood in the doorway and looked into the
room, where a nude man lay thrashing around on his belly, his hands
cupping his groin. He was crying into a pillow. The bed was soaked
in bright red blood.

Prophet turned to the girl at
the other end of the hall, who was busy straightening her skirt and
adjusting her poncho.
‘What the hell did you do to him?’

‘
Gelded him,’ she said matter-of-factly.

Prophet looked into the room
again, then returned his dubious eyes to the girl.
‘Jesus.’

‘
Yep.
I doubt he’ll be showin’ off his one-eyed snake
anymore.’

Prophet sighed, shook his head,
and started back down the hall. The girl stopped in front of him,
extending her open hand.
‘I’ll take my gun back now.’

Absently, still thinking about
the man in the bedroom, who had been punished thoroughly enough by
Prophet
’s
standards, he slapped the gun in the girl’s hand. He gave her a
long, amazed stare, then started back down the stairs.

THE BARMAN WAS waiting at the
bottom of the stairs.
‘What the hell happened up there?’ he asked
Prophet.

‘
You
don’t want to know.’ Pushing past the man on his way to his table,
Prophet said, ‘Got a sawbones around here?’

‘
No.
Mrs. Jergens handles most of the medical problems.’

‘
Well,
you better get her,’ Prophet said, retaking his chair at the table
upon which his beer and half a shot of whiskey still
sat.

‘
I’ll
send someone for her, and get some help hauling these bodies
out.’

‘
There’s one more upstairs,’ Prophet said as the barman
headed for the door.

When the barman had gone,
Prophet threw back the last of his whiskey and chased it with a
healthy swig of the flat beer. He heard steps on the stairs, and
the girl appeared at the newel post, gazing at the two dead men on
the floor before the bar. Her expression was one of
interest and mild
admiration, not of the horror that would have been etched on the
faces of most girls her age— most women, for that
matter.