Lou Prophet 4
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Lou Prophet’s life as a bounty hunter has taught him one rule – You don’t stop riding till the job is finished. Louisa Bonaventure, ‘The Vengeance Queen’, gives that rule a whole new meaning. After seeing her family slaughtered by Handsome Dave Duvall and his Red River Gang, she and Prophet have tirelessly tracked down and wiped out every last murderer – except for the Devil himself, Duvall.
At last, revenge is at hand. Prophet has never killed in cold blood, and always saw that justice had the last word for everyone. But now he’s caught in a bloody crossfire of hatred between the outlaw, who would shoot a man dead for the fun of it, and Louisa, who has sworn to kill Duvall, even if she dies trying ...
THE DEVIL GETS HIS DUE
LOU PROPHET 4
By Peter Brandvold
First published by Berkley Books in 2004
Copyright © 2004 by Peter Brandvold
Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: September 2013
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.
Cover image © 2013 by Westworld Designs
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Published by Arrangement with the Author.
For Stella, Buck, Thor, and Wild Bill
In memory of Old Shep (1987-2000)
For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on this earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.
—1 chronicles 29:15
Draw me after thee. We will run.
—SONG OF SOLOMON 1:4
Chapter One
GRIPPING HIS SAWED-OFF ten-gauge in both hands, Lou Prophet ran through the brush and hunkered down behind a rock. He was about to step out from behind the rock and make his way to the farm cabin yonder in the night-cloaked ravine, when he felt the cold steel of a knife blade press against his throat.
A voice in his ear said, “One move, amigo, and I’ll carve out your voice box and feed it to the crows.”
Prophet froze, heart thudding. Then he realized the voice, smooth as silk and as cold as a Dakota winter, belonged to a girl.
He sighed with relief, his muscles slacking. “Hello, Louisa. I figured we’d meet out here, sooner or later.”
He turned to the seventeen-year-old blonde he’d dubbed The Vengeance Queen. She stared at him, but it was too dark for him to see clearly her china-doll’s face with its long lashes, pouty lips, and delicate nose and jaw. Her hazel eyes were shadowed ovals beneath her brows on which the silvery starlight played. She wore a round-brimmed felt hat, the thong swinging loose beneath her chin.
Louisa Bonaventure pursed her lips with mild chagrin. “Sorry, Lou,” she whispered, careful her voice wouldn’t travel. “I was hoping you were him.”
She removed the blade from Prophet’s throat and slid it into her belt sheath. Prophet looked around and said with incredulity, “How in the hell did you sneak up on me like that, anyway? No one sneaks up on Lou Prophet. I pride myself on that.”
Louisa shrugged. “A girl on her own on a frontier teeming with lusty men learns how to walk softly if she doesn’t want to become the victim of rabid passion.”
“Yeah, but no one sneaks up on Lou Prophet. I’m a bounty hunter, dammit. I can’t have girls or anyone else sneaking up behind me.”
“Pride is a sin,” she said. “Besides, I was on the other side of this rock.” She smiled, self-satisfied.
“Pride is a sin,” he mocked. “You track him here?”
“Yep. Lost him for a day, but he’s here, all right. His horse is in the corral just over there.” Louisa Bonaventure drew her Colt through the slit in her skirts—she concealed a cartridge belt, holster, a knife, and God knew what else in her undergarments—and with one delicate finger gave the cylinder a spin. “But he’s all mine, now.”
“He’s all ours,” Prophet corrected her. “There’s reward money on him. We’ll split it.”
“You know I don’t care about the reward money.” Louisa cemented the phrase with a dark look and turned toward the cabin.
Prophet grabbed her arm. “Wait a minute. We need a plan. You check out the barn, and I’ll check the cabin. Don’t make a move without me.”
“Same to you.”
Without reply, Prophet ran crouching toward the privy silhouetted by starlight.
Handsome Dave Duvall and his Red River Gang had slaughtered Louisa’s family in a Nebraska raid, and she’d spent the last year tracking them down, killing gang members one by one, sometimes two by two. Fate had thrown her and Prophet together over in Minnesota, after the gang had raided the town where Prophet had been holed up waiting for the reward money for another pair of dead cutthroats he’d turned over to the law.
Handsome Dave Duvall was now the last of his once twenty-strong gang, and Prophet knew Louisa would kill him on sight. For that reason, Prophet wanted to take Duvall down alone. He’d always believed in giving a man—no matter how evil—a chance to be taken alive. It was part of the code necessary in an occupation where, if you weren’t vigilant, you could easily become as depraved as the men you hunted.
Besides that, the bounty hunter had grown protective of the overzealous queen of vengeance, and he didn’t want to see her hurt. Not that she hadn’t proven, over and over, she could take care of herself and then some, but everyone’s luck ran out, especially when you pushed it as hard as Louisa often did.
Prophet sidled up to the privy, the ten-gauge held at the ready, its leather lanyard around his neck. He looked toward the cabin sitting about fifty yards away, nestled in knee-high weeds. It was a tall, narrow, two-story affair, sitting catty-corner from the bam, which was only slightly larger than the cabin. This was the backside of the place, and there were a few implements and cream cans and the like, that Prophet would have to skirt around as he made his way to the cabin, so as not to trip and make his presence known.
Carefully, he headed that way. When he made the cabin, he crouched beneath a window, then shuttled a cautious glance within. It was too dark for him to see much, but this looked like the sitting room. The bedrooms were probably upstairs, which was going to make it impossible for Prophet to tell which room Duvall occupied, if any, without going in and kicking down each door.
That would be too risky. If he wasn’t in the barn, Prophet and Louisa would have to wait till morning, until Duvall came out on his own.
That decided, Prophet glanced toward the barn. Someone poked him from behind, and he gave a start, jerking around. It was Louisa.
“Goddamn it!” he rasped.
He grabbed her arm roughly and led her away from the cabin. When they were far enough away that their conversation wouldn’t be overheard, he said, “Will you stop sneakin’ up on me? What are you tryin’ to do, give me a heart stroke?” Without waiting for her to respond, he continued, “I’ve never known a girl as cocksure and downright disrespectful in my life. Do you know that?”
“He’s in the barn.”
Prophet stared at her, still burning. “What?”
“Come on.”
She turned and walked toward the barn. Scowling, Prophet followed. When they came to one end of the log structure, the bounty hunter said, “How do you know?”
Louisa shushed him and walked softly through the grass toward the barn’s closed front doors. As they walked, Prophet heard something inside the barn. At first he thought it was roost
ing chickens or pigeons. He stopped and cocked an ear to the chinking between the logs.
The sounds were clearer now, more distinct, and it was obvious they were not made by chickens.
“Oh, oh god ... oh god,” a girl said breathily.
A man sighed and grunted and sighed, then grunted again.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god ... !”
Prophet turned to Louisa, grinning. She did not return the grin but drew her silver-plated Colt, wheeled, and moved deliberately to the doors.
“Now don’t get crazy,” Prophet told her. “Don’t shoot unless he shoots first.”
Prophet grabbed the handle of the left door. Louisa grabbed the right. Prophet nodded, and they yanked the doors wide.
Prophet shouted, “Freeze or you’re jerky, Dave!”
Two lamps were lit within the shadowy barn, revealing a man and a woman in a hay pile against the wall to Prophet’s right. The woman lay on her back, fully clothed but with her skirt pulled up to her waist and her blouse open, revealing her breasts. A slender man lay between her spread legs, her knees pulled high against his ribs. The man’s denim breeches were down around his ankles, and the flat slabs of his bony white ass were aimed at the rafters.
Her frightened eyes jerking toward the intruders, the girl screamed.
The boy—and that’s what he was, a long-faced boy with freckles, about seventeen or eighteen years old— rolled off the girl. Awkwardly jerking his denims up from his ankles, he cast a horrified glance at Prophet and Louisa.
“Please ... please ...” he muttered, voice quaking, while the girl covered herself with the horse blanket they’d been lying upon.
Prophet and Louisa stepped cautiously into the barn. Prophet was puzzled. “Who in the hell are you?” he asked the boy.
“Who in the hell are you?” the girl, a round-faced brunette, piped up, her voice filled with contempt. “And what in the hell are you doin’ in my poppa’s barn?”
Prophet looked at Louisa. She looked at Prophet, her full lips pursed with disgust.
Turning back to the girl, who sat her ground, grasping the blanket firmly, Prophet said, “Where’s Dave Duvall?”
“Who?” the girl said.
Prophet indicated the lad, who was still trying to get his denims up over his ass, with his shotgun. “This ain’t Handsome Dave Duvall,” he told Louisa.
Ignoring him, Louisa said to the boy and the girl, “A scallywag by the name of Handsome Dave Duvall has left his horse in your corral. Are you giving him shelter in the house?”
The boy was too terrified and too busy with his fly buttons to answer. The girl’s eyes widened even further as they shone now with befuddlement as well as contempt. “What... who ... ?”
“Who left that horse in your corral out—?”
Prophet’s question was cut short by a voice lifting in the distance. “Who’s out there? Who’s in my barn?”
“Oh, god!” the girl squealed, turning to the boy. Her fear had returned in earnest. “It’s Poppa!”
The boy scrambled to his feet, grabbed his shirt and boots, and hightailed it to the door, pushing between Prophet and Louisa. Before he made it, however, a lanky man with a gray beard, who was wielding a shotgun, appeared between the open doors, scowling. The boy stopped, lifting his hands in a gesture of fear and pleading.
“Ronnie Kilgore,” the old man growled deep in his throat.
His angry eyes brushed past Prophet and Louisa as if they weren’t there, landing on the girl still lying in the hay and covering herself with the blanket. One naked knee was exposed.
The old man’s face turned crimson as he turned back to the boy.
“No, Mr. Doggenfeldt!” the boy cried, dropping his boots and shirt, bolting past the man and into the night.
“Boy, I told you what was gonna happen next time I found you with my daughter!” the farmer raged, turning toward the retreating boy and bringing the shotgun to his shoulder.
“Poppa, no!” the girl screamed.
Watching the old man with surprised fascination, Prophet put his fingers in his ears as the old man tripped one trigger on the double barrel and then the other, the hollow booms filling the barn and rending the quiet night.
The old man slowly lowered the gun as he squinted off in the direction in which he’d shot. “Damn,” he growled. “Missed him....”
Gradually, his gaze found Prophet and Louisa. As if seeing them for the first time, his eyes acquired a curious, suspicious cast. “Who in the name of Jehovah are you?”
Prophet cleared his throat, “Sir, my name’s—”
“Wait a minute,” the old man snapped, spying his daughter trying to slink around him. “Tillie, you go back to the house and tell your ma what ye done! And then the two of you open the Good Book and read! If I ever catch you out here with that Kilgore trash again, dancin’ the devil’s dance, I’ll peel the hide off’n you slow!”
The girl had already bolted through the door and was running off through the darkness, sobbing.
The man stared after her, lips pursed, shaking his head darkly. “What am I gonna do with that girl? In spite of her good, God-fearin’ upbringing, she’s lost her way....”
To remind the man of his and Louisa’s presence, Prophet cleared his throat. The man turned to him, anger still etched on his bearded features, skepticism slitting his eyes. As if he were seeing the strangers for the first time, he said, “Who are you?”
Deciding to skip to the chase, Prophet said, “Have you given shelter to Handsome Dave Duvall, sir?”
“Handsome Dave who?”
“Famous badman. Mean son of a bitch. His horse is in your corral yonder.”
“Horse?” the farmer spat, swinging toward the corral. “What horse? I don’t know what in the name of God’s mercy you’re talkin’ about.”
Prophet brushed past the man, heading for the corral. Warily, the farmer followed him, and Louisa stepped in behind him. They headed toward the corral in which four horses stood with their backs blue with starlight; Prophet ducked inside. He approached the tall, white-socked chestnut, ran his hand down its trim neck.
“This one here,” Prophet said. “He’s still got sweat on him.”
The bearded farmer approached the corral and stood there, the broken-open shotgun in the crook of his right arm. He stared into the corral, swinging his gaze right to left. Louisa stood beside him, her hands on the top corral slat.
“That ain’t my horse,” he grumbled. Swinging his gaze around the corral again, he said, “And one of mine’s gone. Ole Jeeter, my paint. Hey, what’s goin’ on here? Where’s my horse?”
“Shit,” Prophet said to Louisa.
“He switched horses,” she said.
“Damn! He’s got a fresh one.”
“Let’s trade ours,” Louisa suggested.
Prophet looked at the three other, aged, swaybacked ponies spread out and facing him in the darkness, pricking their feeble ears. “For these nags? I ain’t givin’ up Mean and Ugly for one of these nags. And your Morgan could outrun any of ’em with hobbles on.
“Shit,” he cursed again, ducking out of the corral. He clumped off in the darkness, and Louisa turned to follow him.
“Hey, whose horse is this?” the farmer called after them.
“Yours,” Prophet said without turning around.
The farmer turned to the big chestnut and rubbed his jaw with pleased speculation. “You don’t say....”
Chapter Two
PROPHET AND LOUISA separated to retrieve their horses, then joined up again west of the farmstead. They searched for horse tracks, but it was too dark for tracking. Because clouds were moving in, obscuring the stars and threatening rain, Prophet selected a campsite on a low hill in a wide, shallow valley stippled with rocks, spindly ironwood trees, and brush.
When he and Louisa had tethered their horses to long lines in deep grass, Louisa took a canvas bucket down to the creek, and Prophet gathered kindling and dead ironwood and built a fire. He was slici
ng salt pork into a skillet when Louisa returned from watering the horses and filled a percolator for coffee.
While the pork fried, she and Prophet sat back against their saddles and drank coffee from battered tin cups, the light from the fire playing on their faces. They were tired from the seemingly endless hunt for Dave Duvall. When two motley coyotes came sniffing around the shadows of the camp’s perimeter, eyes red in the fire glow, Prophet chucked rocks at them. A few minutes later, indignant howls rose eerily from a nearby bluff.
When the howls faded, Louisa said dreamily as she stared into the fire across from Prophet, “My brother had a dog that was part coyote.”
When she offered nothing more, Prophet said, “Oh?”
“Mike liked coyotes,” was all she added in her dreamy way, remembering the coyote dog, Prophet knew, and a whole lot more of the life on her family’s Nebraska farm before the Red River Gang had snuffed it out.
She stared into the fire, and Prophet gazed at her, the smooth, golden skin of her face, blonde hair wisping about her cheeks. Her nostrils were sensuously flared, her upper lip slightly curled. Her eyes were the hazel of a winter’s day. As always, Prophet was amazed by her beauty. Anyone seeing her for the first time would have bet she was a preacher’s daughter or the daughter of a prominent businessman, given to frilly dresses, hair ribbons, books, and piano recitals in the parlor.
Not a puredee, sewn-in-the-saddle, sharpshooting, blade-wielding polecat who’d laid waste to half the Red River Gang single-handedly.
Prophet poked the pork around in the skillet. When it had cooked a little longer, he set several strips on two plates, and he and Louisa ate while the grease sputtered in the still-hot skillet, the percolator gurgled, and the horses stomped around in the brush beyond the fire.
Louisa said nothing as she ate; neither did Prophet. She’d acquired the haunted, faraway look that often crept into her face at night, and he knew from experience it was best to leave her to her silence.
When they finished, Louisa rose without a word and took the dirty utensils down to the creek. Having seen lightning in the southeast, Prophet erected a crude shelter from his tarpaulin and several long branches. He was drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette under the tarpaulin when Louisa reappeared with the cooking gear. She stowed the utensils in her and Prophet’s saddlebags, then poured herself some coffee and lay down beside Prophet under the tarpaulin.