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

by Peter Brandvold

‘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.’

  Prophet looked around for a gun, but no one was wearing one.

  More whooping and gunfire erupted from the men before the mercantile, drawing Prophet’s frantic gaze. They were all mounted now, and starting down the street, heading his way. They fired at windows and shingles as they rode, whooping and hollering like mad spirits released from hell, the hooves of their horses pounding the hard-packed street.

  Prophet shot a glance at Beckett, taking aim across the side of the wagon. ‘Don’t do it, Sheriff!’ Prophet shouted.

  It was too late.

  He heard, ‘Stop! Sheriff!’ and then the roar of the shotgun. It brought the firebrands to a skidding halt. Turning their horses toward the wagon, they opened fire, smoke puffing in huge clouds above their heads, the sound of their mocking laughter mixing with the racketing of their six-shooters and the confused whinnies of their horses.

  ‘Well, that does it,’ Prophet thought, the skin on his neck pricking in earnest, lead filling his boots. ‘The crazy old coot’s finished.’

  As the laughing men resumed their course down the street, Prophet turned to the four shopkeepers cowering a few feet away, behind water troughs and shipping barrels. ‘Doesn’t anyone have a goddamn gun?’

  A little man with a big, waxed mustache regarded him fearfully behind a stack of crates. ‘I got one inside.’

  ‘Get it, goddamnit! Move!’ Prophet shouted.

  The man ran into his millinery and was gone for what seemed like a long time as the firebrands trotted their horses parade like down the street, shooting every window they spotted and even killing several horses tied to hitch racks.

  ‘Hurry up!’ Prophet shouted as the group passed.

  He turned around just as the hat maker reappeared, stooped and cowering, his face white, handing an oily, lumpy rag to Prophet. Crouching behind a water trough, Prophet opened the rag to find a Navy Conversion .36 with cracked grips and a rusty barrel. He hefted the gun in his right hand, not sure if the old cannon would blow his hand off but at the moment not caring. He bounced up from behind the trough and ran into the street as the procession made its way westward.

  ‘Take one from me, you goddamn scurvy swine!’ he shouted, thumbing back the hammer, squeezing the trigger and feeling the old hog nearly buck his hand off, springing his wrist.

  In spite of the pain, he loosed two more shots before all the riders were out of range. So much black powder hung before him that he couldn’t see if he’d hit anything. One of the riders at the end of the bunch turned in his saddle to return fire at Prophet, but apparently thinking he wasn’t worth the effort, he turned back around and followed the others out of town.

  Silence fell as the thunder of the horses receded in the distance. It was just as quickly shattered again as a woman commenced screaming.

  ‘Arnie! Oh, Arnie!’

  Prophet turned to his right and saw a woman standing beside the wagon the sheriff had used for a shield. She wore a gray gingham housedress, an apron, and a lace-edged bonnet she must have thrown on in a hurry, for it was untied.

  ‘No! Oh, Arnie!’

  Prophet headed that way, hoping there was something he could do for the sheriff. It didn’t take long to see there wasn’t.

  Beckett sat behind the left rear wheel of the wagon, his back to an awning post. He could have been napping, his chin on his chest, but for the four holes in his face, another in his throat, and at last three more in his chest. He was a bloody mess, and the wagon had been honeycombed with lead, the two horses killed and lying in the traces, in pools of their own viscera.

  Prophet grabbed the woman’s arm and led her up on the boardwalk—Mrs. Arnie Beckett, widowed in an eye blink.

  ‘Take her home and call the undertaker,’ Prophet told one of the men who’d gathered at the wagon, looking as jittery as raw recruits in the aftermath of their first battle.

  Unsteadily, the man led the crying woman off.

  Prophet walked around the dead horses toward the mercantile. When he got there, he stopped before the woman lying slumped on the steps and checked her pulse. It was an instinctive move running contrary to logic, for the small, neat hole dripping blood between her eyes told him she was dead.

  He mounted the steps and went inside to see who else had been the victims of the gang’s violence. Inside the door, he stopped and looked around at the aisles of clothes and other dry
goods, at the upended barrels of flour and nails and scattered displays of soaps and smoking pipes and chewing tobaccos. Nearly all the candy barrels and bins had been upended as well, the rock candy and licorice and jawbreakers scattered about the floor.

  A guttural groan lifted from the back of the store, toward the counter, and Prophet moved toward it. Down the aisle he saw a man in a bloody apron sitting with his back to the counter. A tall, lanky man with short, black hair pomaded to his scalp and parted in the middle, he held his hands across his belly. Prophet winced when he saw that the man was literally holding his guts in his hands.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Prophet sputtered, kneeling before the man. Hearing someone mounting the steps, he turned and yelled through the door, ‘Someone get a sawbones— quick!’

  He turned back to the wounded mercantile proprietor, who was shaking his head. His eyes were vacant and glassy. Blood bubbled from his mouth.

  ‘No ... use,’ he rasped. ‘I’m a ... goner.’

  ‘Hold on, buddy,’ Prophet said, squeezing the man’s shoulder. But he knew the man was right. Back during the Little Misunderstanding, he’d seen similar wounds. They were as deadly as they were painful, and this man didn’t have a chance.

  ‘My wife?’ the man said. His chin was dipped to his chest.

  Prophet hesitated. ‘Fit as a fiddle.’

  The man gave a halfhearted chuff, reading the lie. That’s . .. that’s . .. what I... f-figured.’

  The man paused as if to conserve his strength. He took a rattling breath and said, ‘D-daughter?’

  The daughter was apparently the blond girl the lead rider had ridden away with, thrown callously over his saddle and screaming for her life.

  ‘I’m gonna get her back for you,’ Prophet said. His jaw was set hard as he stared down at the dying man, his heart breaking for all the hell that had happened here ... for what? There couldn’t have been more than fifty or sixty dollars in the cash drawer.

  Now the decent old sheriff was dead, along with most of a family. Who knew how many those human blowflies had left dead or injured up the street, before they’d finished their raid.

  The dying man moved his hand to Prophet’s and squeezed his wrist. It wasn’t much of a squeeze, but Prophet could tell the man had something important on his mind. ‘Get... get her back ... for me. P-please.’

  Prophet squeezed back. ‘I will. You can count on that.’

  Then the man’s hand slid away from Prophet’s wrist, and slowly, as though he were drifting to sleep, he slumped sideways to the floor and lay still.

  Prophet stood and turned toward the front of the store, where several townsmen had gathered in the aisle, looking shocked and wary.

  ‘Ole Hank,’ one of them said slowly. ‘He dead?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Prophet said, brushing past the townsmen and heading for the door. When he got there, he pushed through the screen, descended the steps past the dead woman, and headed for the boarding house, moving quickly.

  He’d get his guns and his possibles and be on the trail in a half hour. Then he’d hunt those renegades and turn them toe down hard—with not a scrap of mercy and no concern for monetary reward—if he had to ride all the way to hell and thrash the devil with a stick to do it.

  Chapter Five

  ‘SHIT!’

  Prophet reined Mean and Ugly to a halt in a cottonwood copse along the grassy, southern bank of the Otter-tail River. The sun was going down, but making the sky even darker was a plum-colored storm curtain beating in from the west.

  The curtain was streaked with pearl rain. From the size of the cloud topping the storm, it was a mean one, too, and would no doubt obliterate the tracks of the men Prophet was following, had been following for the past hour and a half, since leaving Luther Falls in a wind-splitting gallop.

  ‘Lou, you be careful,’ Cordelia had admonished him from her front porch as he’d sprinted off down the street toward the livery, saddlebags over his shoulder. ‘That’s the Red River Gang!’

  He hadn’t had time to go back and have her fill him in on just who in hell the Red River Gang was, but the tall Scandinavian who ran the livery barn had given him the quick lowdown while saddling his horse. Turned out the Red River Gang was a group of renegades led by Handsome Dave Duvall and Dayton Flowers—both murdering outlaws whom Prophet had heard of down in the Indian Nations. Wanted by federal marshals out of Fort Smith, they’d fled the southern plains to the north, where they’d been running hog-wild for the past six months, raiding settlements up and down the Red River between Wahpeton and Grand Forks in eastern Dakota Territory.

  ‘They always raided more into Dakota than Minnesota,’ the liveryman had groused as he cinched Prophet’s saddle. ‘No one ever expected ‘em to show their ugly souls in Luther Falls. I mean, there ain’t nothin’ here worth thievin’!’

  Well they had a girl and some candy and the satisfaction of having turned a quiet little town upside down, and that’s probably a good day’s work for that bunch, Prophet thought now, as he sat watching the storm growing on the horizon.

  ‘Shit!’ he repeated, knowing he was going to have to seek shelter soon, probably throw a lean-to together to keep from getting soaked.

  He looked westward, the direction the gang’s tracks led. It was a vast, flat, brown prairie out there, relatively featureless but for the Ottertail River twisting through, sheathed in high brush and cottonwoods. The gang was following the river toward the Dakota border, and Prophet figured they’d hole up, too, probably in a bend much like the one Prophet sat along now, cursing the weather and the lateness of the hour.

  If he stopped now, he wouldn’t be able to get started again till the morning. No point tracking those men in the dark and risk losing their trail—a trail that would prove hard enough to follow after that squall hit.

  He turned his horse back into the trees, dismounted, and stripped the gear off Mean and Ugly, and hobbled him. There was plenty of tall grass around, and the river offered water, so he knew the horse wouldn’t wander far. It was starting to rain, and the wind was kicking up by the time he’d rigged a lean-to with the tarpaulin in which he’d wrapped his bedroll. He’d chosen a campsite in a slight hollow with a big, uprooted cottonwood along one side, and the shelter kept him from getting soaked, although wind prevented him from building a fire.

  Fortunately, the heaviest wind lasted only ten minutes or so. When it had tapered off, Prophet went out in the spitting rain to gather dry wood, returning with several small branches that had been sheltered by heavier limbs. He piled the wood outside the lean-to, then carved out a small hole in the center of the shelter, surrounded it with rocks he gathered from the riverbank, and built a fire.

  He didn’t dally in starting a pot of coffee heating, with which he’d try to chase the damp chill from his bones. While the pot gurgled and sighed in the coals, he produced the bacon Cordelia and Annabelle had packed for him, and started it frying in his skillet. When the bacon was done, he fished the strips out of the grease, packed them and several extra dollops of grease from the pan in three fresh biscuits, and his supper was made.

  He ate hungrily and washed his makeshift but delicious meal down with tar-black coffee, watching the rain, hearing the drops clatter on the tarpaulin. What was foremost in his mind, though, was the image of Sheriff Arnie Beckett riddled with bullets, and the dying mercantile proprietor feebly trying to hold his innards in place and begging Prophet to save his daughter.

  That he’d do, by Ned. If it was the last thing he did in this world.

  Most of Prophet’s man hunting jobs had been pure business transactions which he’d carried out with cool objectivity. He’d rarely been a witness to the deprivations his quarries had committed and which had led to their being wanted by the law.

  This was different. He’d seen what the Red River Gang had done, the brutality they’d carried out with the abandon of boys teasing a schoolyard snake. He’d seen the men and horses they’d killed, the property they’d destroyed, and th
e girl they’d carted off like the candy Handsome Dave Duvall had hauled out of the store.

  And because he’d seen it in person, without being able to do a damn thing about it at the time, his hunt for them was personal. He figured all or most of the men already had high bounties on their heads, but he didn’t care about that. What he wanted first and foremost was to free the girl. Then he wanted to see the renegades either behind bars or dead.

  How he’d execute such a task, he wasn’t sure. There were at least twelve of them and only one of him. Eventually, lawmen would be alerted to their trail, but the group had no doubt cut the telegraph lines out of Luther Falls, so for the next few days, at least, Prophet would be on his own.

  For probably a hell of a lot longer than that. He doubted this godforsaken part of the country had any badge-toters with enough rawhide to face down the Red River Gang. Federal marshals would probably be called in, but that would take days, and it would take the marshals at least a week to get here, even longer to pick up the gang’s trail.

  No, Prophet was alone for now, on the trail of twenty ruthless killers. And he had no inkling of a plan....

  ‘But then again, I’m not much of a planner, anyway,’ he said to himself, setting his cup on a rock and fishing in the breast pocket of his buckskin tunic for his Bull Durham and rolling papers.

  He smoked and watched the rain, and after dark he checked on Mean and Ugly, banked the fire, and rolled up in his soogan. The next day dawned clear and cool and fresh-smelling after the rain. Prophet woke to geese honking on the river and ducks jawing at the geese.

  He got up and ate a hurried breakfast, downing several cups of coffee and smoking several cigarettes before rigging out Mean and Ugly. He’d taken down his lean-to and was all packed and mounted by the time the sun poked its bright orange top above the western hills.

  Fortunately, the rain hadn’t lasted long enough to obliterate the renegades’ trail. It had made it fainter, however, and Prophet had to be extra vigilant, keeping his eyes glued to the grassy sod. He couldn’t just rely on the flattened grass trails normally left by horses, for the wind and rain themselves had flattened plenty of grass. Several times he had to stop and dismount to spy hoof prints or horse apples in the sod.