He was no more than halfway across the street when the saloon door opened and several men started onto the boardwalk under the awning, their voices loud in the quiet night, the piano music and din pushing out behind them.
Prophet froze, his veins filling with adrenaline. He crouched, looked around, and headed for the boardwalk across the side street from the saloon, hoping the shadows of the shop there would conceal him.
Making the boardwalk at a shuffling, crouching run, holding the shotgun across his chest, he pressed his back against the wall of the store and gritted his teeth, watching the three silhouettes of the men across the street, and listening. From their conversation, if you could call their drunken blather conversation. Prophet could tell they hadn’t seen him. He knew from experience that men who’d been drinking as long as they had were experiencing the world from a thick, gauzy curtain, their senses deadened.
They were grumbling and cursing about something as they milled before the horses. Prophet waited there in the shadows, frozen, watching and listening, trying to figure out what they were up to. Surely they weren’t leaving town at this hour, after all they’d had to drink.
At last, it became obvious they were gathering up the reins of all the horses at the hitch rack, and were leading the horses off somewhere.
‘Shit... I don’t see why this is my job,’ one of them complained.
‘Shut up, Price.’
‘I’m gonna miss my turn with that girl upstairs.’
‘You rather have a dead horse to ride tomorrow?’
Price said something in reply, but Prophet couldn’t hear it because the three men and the eight horses had drifted off down the street, apparently heading for the livery stable. He’d heard enough, however.
So the girl really was upstairs... .
Prophet watched the saloon to see if anyone else came out, then took a breath and ran northward down the side street. After about fifty yards, he stopped, took another gander at the saloon, then headed across the street to the saloon’s rear.
There was a slender staircase running up the back of the building to the second story. Peering around in the dark to make sure no one was around or using the privy, which was a pale splotch in the darkness twenty yards north, Prophet put his hands on the railings, trying to cushion his steps, and began climbing.
He took it slow, for the stair planks were badly rotted in places and squeaked like rusty hinges. When he made the second-story landing, he peered into the frost-edged window in the door’s top half. Before him was a narrow hall with a shabby rug, faded, peeling wallpaper, an askew picture frame, and a single lantern in a wall bracket. In each wall there were two closed doors. Opening the outside door carefully, Prophet stepped inside.
When all appeared clear, he closed the door behind him and moved forward, hearing the thunderous noise below, laced with the piano’s cacophony and a drunk man singing an Irish drinking song Prophet had heard once or twice during the war. It was a lusty song Prophet had liked, but he suddenly didn’t like it anymore. Through the soles of his boots, he felt the vibration all the racket made in the floor.
He moved forward, peering at the cracks under the doors. No light escaped the cracks of the first two doors he passed. When he came to the second set, the set closest to the door leading to the stairs to the floor below, he discovered lights bleeding from the cracks under both doors.
He stopped between the doors, breathing shallowly, his heart beating slowly but powerfully, his pulse throbbing in his neck. Now, how in the hell was he supposed to figure out which room the Luther Falls girl was in?
The answer came a few seconds later, in the form of a giggle behind the door to his right.
Okay, she wasn’t behind that door, he thought with a sigh, turning to the door on his left. He took another deep breath, lifted his hat, and ran a hand through his sweat-damp hair. He replaced the hat, produced his bowie from the scabbard on his left hip, knowing that, in spite of the revelry below, there was no way he could use the revolver and not bring the whole gang down on top of him.
He began twisting the doorknob but stopped suddenly when he heard boots scuffing inside the room and a deep male voice say, ‘Shit, she’s about as fun as a dead fish.’
The man’s voice had grown as he neared the door, as did the sound of his footfalls. Obviously, he was about to exit the room.
Prophet looked around, finding nowhere to hide, his heart leaping into his throat.
Chapter Eleven
PROPHET STEPPED TO the left of the door, pressing his back to the wall and praying for all he was worth that the man wouldn’t see him.
Shit, shit, shit, shi—
The door opened. A tall, broad figure appeared, placing his hat on his head as he stepped through the doorway. Fortunately, he’d put his hat on with his right hand, and that arm had blocked his view of Prophet.
As soon as his hat was on, he turned to his left, pulling the door closed behind him, then continued leftward down the hall. Prophet watched the man’s back as he sauntered drunkenly to the door at the end of the hall, opened it to the rabble below, walked through, and flung it angrily closed behind him.
Prophet sighed, tears of relief moistening his eyes. ‘You know, I don’t deserve to be that lucky,’ he whispered to himself.
Stepping before the door once again, he dried his right hand on his pants, then placed it on the knob and turned it. The door opened, and Prophet quickly entered, drawing his bowie.
As he had suspected when the other man had spoken, another man was there, but fortunately he was sitting on the other side of the bed, facing the outside wall.
The man was pulling on his boots. Without turning to Prophet, he said, ‘Wait your goddamn turn, damnit!’
Prophet stood there, his back to the door, glancing from the nude girl on the bed, her wrists and ankles tied to each of the four bedposts with strips of cloth, to the man pulling his boots on. When Prophet didn’t say anything, the man turned a scowling look at him over his left shoulder.
The scowl grew when the man saw Prophet. His face flushing, the man bolted to his feet, reaching for the pistol on his hip. The gun hadn’t cleared leather before Prophet’s bowie, spinning end over end, thunked blade first into the man’s broad chest.
The man grunted, dropping his pistol and stumbling back against the wall. He raised his hands to the knife as if to remove it, but he didn’t have the strength. Lifting his exasperated gaze to Prophet, the man slid down the wall, making a low hissing sound, and died about the same time his butt hit the floor.
Prophet quickly closed the door and went to the bed. The girl, who appeared about thirteen or fourteen, stared up at him with shock-dulled brown eyes. She had a round, cherubic face, and sweat-soaked, sandy blond hair. Her face was bruised, one eye nearly swollen shut. Her cracked lips moved but no words escaped her mouth.
‘It’s all right,’ Prophet said. ‘I’m a friend, and I’m going to take you home.’ He hadn’t finished the last sentence before he’d begun slicing the cloth tethering her arms and feet to the bedposts.
When he was through, he drew a quilt and sheet up from the bottom of the bed, covering her. Then he lifted her off the bed and swung around to the door.
‘No,’ the girl sobbed quietly, shaking her head, shuddering.
‘Sh. It’s all right. I’m taking you home.’
Cracking the door, he peered into the hall. All was clear. Behind the door opposite, bedsprings squawked, and a man and a woman moaned.
Hurriedly, Prophet slipped out of the room and started down the hall, the girl inert in his arms. He was about ten feet from the door when a figure appeared in the window of the door’s upper half. Prophet froze.
The door opened, and Louisa stood there, gazing at him expectantly.
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ she hissed. ‘Come on!’
Prophet was incredulous. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I was waitin’ under the stairs when I saw you. I’ll co
ver you while you get her on your horse and get out of here.’
‘What were you doin’ under the stairs?’
‘Waitin’ for opportunities—what the hell do you think I was doing?’ The girl’s face widened with anxious impatience. ‘Will you go?’
Prophet exhaled sharply and headed through the door. When he’d stepped onto the landing he heard a man groan somewhere beneath him.
‘Help!’ a voice croaked.
Again, Prophet froze. Swinging sharply to Louisa, he said, ‘What the hell was that?’
‘Oh, no!’ the girl sputtered, her face bleaching as she gazed over the railing. ‘I thought I killed that son of a bitch.’
‘Toomer,’ a man drawled in a trembling voice. ‘Toomer ... Da ... Dan ...’
Fortunately, the din in the saloon was too loud for the man’s voice to carry. But if one of the others was outside. ...
‘Well, finish him, goddamnit!’ Prophet snarled.
But Louisa had already started down the stairs, taking no caution on the squawky steps. Prophet went down behind her, watching his feet so he didn’t tumble face first with the kidnapped girl in his arms. He’d reached the body just as the man called out again, louder this time, ‘No! Toom—’ Something cut him off.
Prophet watched Louisa move back toward him in the darkness. ‘Got him,’ she said, holding up a knife that gleamed wetly in the stray light filtering from the saloon’s front.
‘Hey, what’s goin’ on back there?’ a man called from the other side of the saloon. ‘Jack, the gremlins get you, or what?’
‘Let’s move!’ Prophet hissed at Louisa.
He wheeled with the kidnapped girl in his arms, and cut across the side street. Louisa ran beside him.
‘Hey, Jack!’ one of the gang members called.
Prophet could tell the man was behind the saloon now. He’d find the body soon.
Prophet and Louisa pressed their backs against the building on the corner opposite the saloon. Prophet looked around to see how many men were after them, but he couldn’t see anything yet.
Turning to Louisa, he carped, ‘That was a hell of a crazy stunt, kid. You’re gonna get us all killed yet!’
‘I thought I killed him dead!’
‘Well, you didn’t. And...’ Prophet let his voice trail off, too frustrated for expression. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you hightail it back to the room you finagled. Take the back alleys and don’t stop for nothing.’
‘Where you going?’
‘I’m taking this girl back to Luther Falls. We can’t stay here. Now! Go!’
He gave Louisa a shove and started the opposite way, toward the main street and his horse. He stopped angrily when Louisa called, ‘Lou?’
He turned to her, a slim figure in the shadows against the building.
‘Meet me in Fargo tomorrow night.’
Before Prophet could respond, she’d slipped around the building’s rear corner and was gone.
Prophet didn’t have time to consider the message. Turning back around, he trotted down the boardwalk toward Main Street, shaking his head and hissing, ‘Crazy goddamn younker!’
He paused at the edge of the main street and took another gander at the saloon. It was lit up like a lone ship at a T-wharf, shadows moving in the windows. Several men were kicking around behind the place, talking loudly enough to be heard above the roar from within.
Prophet ran across the street, frightening Mean and Ugly, who’d been dozing with his head down. With the girl in his arms, he clumsily removed the bridle reins from the hitch rack.
‘Easy, boy, easy,’ he whispered to the fiddle-footed horse.
He turned a stirrup out and peered down at the girl, whose eyes fluttered as she drifted in and out of consciousness, the corners of her eyes crinkled with pain.
‘Listen, I’m gonna set you up on my horse, and then I’m gonna climb up behind you. It might hurt a little, but don’t yell out, okay?’
Prophet didn’t think she heard him, but then her eyes fluttered again, remained open for a second, and she nodded slightly.
‘There you go, honey,’ he said gently, lifting her onto the saddle. ‘You’ll be home in no time.’
As he climbed up behind her, she turned her head. ‘Who . . . ?’ she said. ‘Who ... are ... ?’
‘I’m Lou Prophet. Easy, now. Just lay your head back against my chest and hold tight to the horn.’
He adjusted the quilt and sheet around her legs and began turning Ugly away from the tie rail.
‘Hey, you!’ someone shouted.
A gun barked, the bullet sizzling the air about six inches off his right ear. Mean and Ugly reared, sidestepping, nearly throwing both Prophet and the girl into the street.
The girl cried weakly, fighting to hold on, and Prophet grabbed the horn and sawed the reins. ‘Hoah, Mean . . . easy!’
Another pistol barked, the slug shattering a window in the general store. Prophet ducked, reining Mean and Ugly leftward into the street. Without Prophet having to slap the iron to him—the dun had been with Prophet long enough to know when they were at death’s doorstep—the horse lunged off its back legs and fairly vaulted down the street, heading east at a hungry gallop.
More pistol fire opened up behind them—at least four shooters, Prophet guessed. The hail of bullets sailed around and over Prophet’s head as he leaned forward to protect the girl. The slugs kicked dust at Mean’s feet, tore into stores and water troughs, and shattered windows, before Prophet kneed the horse southward around the first corner he came to, feeling one of the slugs burn a nasty swath across his thigh.
Well, they’d discovered the body. And then they’d seen him. Putting two and two together, they’d figured the score.
On the plus side, they were drunk, and he was sober as a parson. It would take them a good fifteen or twenty minutes before they found and saddled their horses, maybe longer. What’s more, they’d have a hell of a time tracking him in the dark.
He just hoped they hadn’t seen Louisa....
He rode a circuitous route through the edge of town, then headed south along the river. The night was so dark it was hard to see where he was going. He left the particulars of the route to Mean and Ugly, as surefooted a mount as Prophet had ever ridden and one of the few reasons he put up with the cussed beast.
While he rode, his shoulders steadying the girl before him, who gave occasional weak sighs of complaint and lolled against his chest, he searched for a place he could cross the swollen river, knowing the ferryman would be dead asleep at this hour and that waking him would take too much time.
Several times he pulled the horse eastward into the big cottonwoods sheathing the Red, only to find the water far too wide and deep to cross without swimming. When it didn’t look like he was going to find a shallow enough ford, however, he said to hell with it, turned the horse into the river, and gave him the spurs.
The horse balked, snorting and lifting its snout.
‘Come on, Mean, you candy-ass ...’
Grudgingly, as though entering a pool of vipers, the horse mince-stepped into the water. It wasn’t long before he was up to his neck and Prophet and the girl were up to their waists.
The girl cried, recoiling at the feel of the water. ‘Sorry, honey,’ Prophet said, putting his hand on her shoulder to steady her. ‘We’re crossin’ the river. You’re okay. Don’t frighten Mean. He’s scared enough the way it is.’
Prophet had a hell of a time staying on the horse and keeping the girl mounted as well. The water was black and bone-splitting cold, and the girl sobbed and moaned in protest, breaking Prophet’s heart with her cries of, ‘No ... please ... no ...’ After all that had happened to the poor young ’un, now she was being swept across a river in the middle of the damn night. And what was he taking her home to? Two dead parents and a shot-up store.
The current took them downstream a good quarter mile before the dun finally planted his hooves and climbed out of the water, Prophet and the girl dripping mud, their teeth c
hattering. The bounty hunter brought the shivering horse to a halt on the bank.
‘You all right, Miss?’ he asked the girl, tipping her gently against his shoulder so he could look into her face.
Her teeth were chattering, her eyes were squeezed shut now, and she said nothing.
‘I’m sorry about this, Miss. I’d build a fire and dry you out if we had time, but we don’t. You’ll be home shortly, though.’
He reined Mean eastward out of the trees along the river, the horse splashing through the six inches of water and mud covering the prairie for at least a hundred yards beyond the riverbed. Then he spurred him into a lope.
They rode hard along the pale wagon path, the air cool against his wet clothes, his soaked denims clinging to his skin. The girl moaned often, bobbing against his chest and shoulder. The horse plunged eastward, blowing, his powerful muscles rippling beneath the saddle. The sky was black, and the air smelled of wet earth and budding leaves.
Prophet knew they were close to farms when he detected wood smoke. He would have stopped at one and asked for a warm bed for the girl, but he didn’t want to put others in danger. He had to get to Luther Falls and get the girl to Cordelia’s, where she would be safe. He doubted the gang would track him that far—twenty-five miles. They were too drunk, and he was only one man, she, one girl.
He stopped to rest the horse after an hour’s hard ride. He dismounted and lay the girl against a tree. She was moaning in earnest now, for the ride was torturous.
‘I’m sorry, Miss,’ Prophet said, truly grieved.
‘No,’ she said, wagging her head, lips trembling. ‘I can’t. Please ... no. Leave me.’
‘I’m not gonna leave you, Miss ...’
‘Please,’ she begged, reaching out and grabbing his hand. She opened her eyes, which gleamed darkly, filled with pleading. ‘Don’t take me back there. I’m sick and ... and ... I can’t go back there after ... what they done to me.’
Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) Page 9