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

by Peter Brandvold

  ‘Oh, Miss,’ Prophet said. ‘No one’s gonna—’

  ‘Please shoot me, Mister!’ the girl cried in a gut-wrenching little girl’s voice. ‘I can’t ride no more. My insides ache and... after what they done to me!’ She broke down in tears, sobbing, and Prophet let her lie there, half-cradled in his arms, pleading and sobbing.

  Finally, when he’d taken as much time as he dared, he got up, took the horse’s reins, and mounted up once again, easing the girl before him on the saddle. She sobbed and shook her head, calling out for her mother—a mother she would never see again. Grimly, Prophet reined the dun back onto the trail and kneed him into another wind-splitting gallop toward Luther Falls.

  The girl cried out, grieving, for her mother. Prophet pressed her head against his chest, his jaw set grimly, his eyes hard, and tried to block out her cries as he rode.

  He thought of the girl in his arms and of Louisa Bonaventure. How many other children had the Red River Gang torn the souls from?

  How sweet it was going to be to make them pay....

  Chapter Twelve

  HANDSOME DAVE DUVALL reined his horse to a skidding halt along the trees on the west bank of the Red River. He squinted into the dark ahead of him, but couldn’t see a thing. He didn’t think it was only because he’d had more than his share of Wahpeton’s coffin varnish, either.

  It was just too damn dark. Too dark for riding and too dark for tracking.

  Not only that, but it was a damn good night for getting bushwhacked.

  He raised his left hand as the others approached at a gallop, nearly running him down. ‘Hold up, you stupid sons o’ bitches,’ Duvall complained testily. Nothing made him nastier than a good time interrupted, and a good time was just what he and the boys had been having back at the Oasis.

  The riders reined up, cursing, yelling to the others behind them to do likewise. When they were all stopped and gathered around him in the dark, Duvall said, ‘Anyone get a good look at that son of a bitch?’

  ‘I just saw him from behind,’ called Frank Henry.

  ‘Me, too,’ said Jack Toomer. ‘Big bastard. He had the girl.’

  Handsome Dave Duvall’s partner, Dayton Flowers, turned to Duvall with a question in his long, dark face— the at once timid and fierce face of a Welsh parson’s boy raised on pious, soul-building strappings. ‘Lawman?’

  ‘Could be,’ Duvall said, turning his head to gaze southward.

  ‘U.S. marshal, maybe,’ said someone from deep in the ring of bleary-eyed riders and snorting horses. Unlike the men, the horses were all fresh; the group had left their own exhausted mounts in the livery barn and stolen the ones they were riding now.

  ‘Maybe we’re dealin’ with a marshal,’ Duvall said. ‘But I have a feelin’ we ain’t gonna find out tonight. We can’t follow him. It’s too hard to track him on a night this black, and if we keep pushin’ it, we’re liable to get bushwhacked.’

  Dayton Flowers twisted around in his saddle, perplexed. ‘So what do you want to do, Dave? Your call.’

  ‘Who’s the soberest among us?’ Duvall called to the group.

  No one said anything. They glanced around at each other, humorously sheepish. Their fetid breath puffed around their heads and drifted toward the clouds hovering just beyond the haggard tops of the cotton woods.

  Duvall snorted. ‘Silver? Taber?’

  When both men had replied in the affirmative, Duvall said, ‘I want you boys to ride to Luther Falls. That’s where that girl came from, so that’s probably where the big bastard is taking her. Get after him and find out who the hell he is. If you can, kill him. If you can’t, send me a telegraph in Fargo the day after tomorrow, and let me know what you found out about him.’

  There was a brief silence. Thomas Taber cleared his throat and said in his slow, husky bass, ‘How come you want me to track him, Dave? I had me as much o’ the busthead as—’

  ‘ ‘Cause I just told you to, that’s why,’ Duvall said in a low, menacing voice. ‘But if you don’t want to go, Tom, I’ll send someone else.’

  Duvall spurred his horse ahead and stared pointedly at the bulky, mustachioed rider in the knit cap and buffalo coat. ‘Is that what you want, Tom? Be sure now. Think it over real good before you answer.’

  Taber watched Duvall dully, the liquor in his veins making him consider the proposition. He knew Duvall had singled him out because Duvall knew he thought he could lead the group himself if only Handsome Dave had an accident—like, say, a bullet between his shoulder blades. But then again, this was no time for an uprising. Not after all the liquor Taber had consumed and the energy he’d spent on the two German whores and the little blond filly from Luther Falls.

  At last, he smoothed his mustache with his thumb and index finger, and conjured a defiant smile. ‘No, I’ll track the son of a bitch. Not only that, but I’ll kill him—marshal or no marshal—in my grand old style.’ He placed his left hand on the enormous Green River knife jutting up from his beaded belt sheath.

  Duvall returned Taber’s grin. ‘I had a feelin’ you’d put your best foot forward, Tom. And that’s just why I picked you, too.’ He turned to the short, stout half-breed Sioux in the smelly buckskins and black, broad-brimmed hat. ‘Billy? You got any questions?’

  The wiry half-breed said nothing. Customarily focused and kill-hungry, he reined his horse toward the river and gigged it through the trees. Soon Duvall heard Silver’s horse splashing in the flood water.

  ‘Well, wait for me, for chrissakes, Billy,’ Taber groused as he gigged his horse in the same direction. ‘Crazy Injun ...’

  When both men were gone, Flowers turned to Duvall. ‘What’s the rest of us gonna do, Dave?’

  ‘We head north of Wahpeton, just in case the bastard’s a marshal and there’s more where he came from. Hell, this country could be swarmin’ with badge-toters, for all we know. We’ll camp at the first good spot we find, then head for Fargo in the morning.’

  When they were riding north ahead of the group, Dayton Rowers gigged his horse up alongside Duvall’s. ‘I have a feelin’ that man was workin’ alone, Dave,’ he said with a drunken leer. ‘And what’s more, I think ole Billy and Tom Taber are gonna make chicken feed out of him.’

  Duvall grinned in return, in spite of his knowing he was soon going to have to settle things with Taber.

  ‘If anyone can,’ he said, ‘it’s those two.’

  Prophet entered Luther Falls around midnight. The town was dark and silent, and so was Cordelia’s boarding house, looming darkly against the starless sky.

  Prophet rode up to the front gate and dismounted, then reached up for the girl. When he had her in his arms, he turned through the gate in the picket fence, climbed the porch steps, and pounded on the door.

  He had to pound for nearly a minute before a light appeared in one of the rooms, then another. He heard footsteps and saw another light shimmer to life in the foyer. A large figure appeared behind the frosted glass.

  ‘Go away!’ rose a rancorous female voice.

  ‘Annabelle, it’s Lou Prophet. Open up!’

  The door opened. Annabelle stood there in a powder-blue duster draped like a curtain over her matronly frame, a nightcap on her head, and a lantern in her hand. ‘Oof-ta! What’s dis, Lou?’

  ‘The girl from the mercantile,’ Prophet said as he pushed his way into the foyer.

  ‘Achter-lever! Poor Lettie!’

  ‘You have an empty room?’

  Before Annabelle could respond, another voice said, ‘Lou!’

  Prophet turned and saw Cordelia coming down the stairs in a pink wrapper, her hair falling about her shoulders.

  ‘I have the girl from the mercantile here,’ Prophet told her. ‘She’s in a bad way.’

  Cordelia opened her mouth to speak, but stopped, turned, and headed back up the stairs. ‘Bring her this way.’

  Prophet followed her to the second floor and down the dark hall dimly illuminated by the candle in Cordelia’s hand.

  ‘Lo
u, where did you ever find her?’ Cordelia asked as she opened a door to one of the rooms.

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  Cordelia quickly drew back the sheet and quilts, and Prophet lay the girl, whose groans were now disconcertingly tremulous and weak, on the bed.

  ‘Oh, Lettie, I’d thought for sure we’d seen the last of you,’ Cordelia cooed, leaning down and smoothing the hair from the girl’s eyes.

  She turned to Prophet, her large brown eyes reflecting the light from the candle she’d placed on the bed table. ‘Has she been ... ?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Cordelia turned to the girl, biting her lip. ‘Oh, my.’

  ‘Is there a doctor in town?’ Prophet asked.

  ‘There was until the Red River Gang struck,’ Cordelia said tightly. ‘They shot him in the knee on their rampage down Main Street; he’ll be out of commission for awhile.’

  Prophet heard footsteps and turned as Annabelle swung into the room, breathing hard. ‘I have water heating on the stove,’ she told Cordelia, bustling toward the bed.

  ‘We’ll take care of her,’ Cordelia told Prophet. ‘Your old room’s open. Why don’t you get some rest?’

  Knowing it was time for the women to take over, Prophet nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him. Out in the hall, he saw that one of the other doors was cracked. The withered features of an old man peered out, silhouetted by the lamp behind him.

  ‘You find that girl, Lou?’ the man asked him in a weathered voice.

  ‘Sure did, Bert.’

  ‘Good for you.’ The door closed.

  Prophet headed downstairs, feeling his way in the darkness. As he did so, he felt his exhaustion nearly overcome him, and the swath the bullet had burned on his thigh began barking in earnest as he descended the stairs. His pants were still damp and caked with river mud. He needed to get out of them, but first he had to tend to his horse.

  Outside, he stabled Mean and Ugly in the buggy shed behind the boarding house, foregoing the livery stable uptown in case the Red River Gang trailed him here. It was best to stay put for the night.

  When he’d stripped the tack off the dun, grained and watered him, and given him a cursory rubdown, Prophet closed the stable doors and headed back to the house. He climbed the stairs to his old room, and, finding the door unlocked, indulged in a smile. He had a feeling Cordelia had left it unlocked just for him.

  He went inside, lit a lamp, tossed his saddlebags on the floor, hung his rifle and shotgun on the wall pegs, and peeled out of his clothes, piling them all by the door where Annabelle would find them and haul them off for washing.

  He was giving himself a sponge bath with water from the pitcher on the dresser when someone tapped on the door.

  ‘Hold it—I ain’t decent,’ he said, looking around for something with which to cover himself.

  The door opened, and there was Cordelia. ‘I’ll say you aren’t,’ she said, giving her upper lip an ironic curl.

  She came in, looking him up and down with those smoky eyes, one eyebrow arched, and closed the door behind her.

  ‘How’s the girl?’ Prophet asked her, going back to his scrubbing. He was too tired to be aroused by the presence of this gorgeous woman, gazing as she was at his nakedness, as though at prime beef she was considering for a picnic.

  ‘She’ll be okay ... physically,’ Cordelia said. ‘Anna-belle’s going to spend the night in her room.’ She frowned when she saw the gash on Prophet’s muscular left thigh. ‘Oh, Lou!’ she exclaimed, keeping her voice down.

  ‘It’s nothin’—just a burn,’ Prophet said.

  ‘Oh, here, let me,’ she said, moving to him and taking the sponge from his hand. She dipped the sponge in the basin, then knelt before him, placing one hand on the back of his thigh and dabbing at the cut with the other.

  It was a strange sensation, having this fully-clothed woman kneeling before him in all his nakedness, dabbing at the wound, which nipped with every dab of the sponge. Before he realized it, he was becoming aroused, his member stiffening only about a foot to the right of Cordelia’s angelic face.

  He felt sheepish about it, and tried to ignore it. But then Cordelia noticed it and looked up at him with a wistful smile.

  ‘Must be feeling better,’ she said.

  ‘I... reckon.’

  She stared up at his face, then slid her eyes to the fully erect organ, narrowing her gaze and nibbling her upper lip. ‘Does that need tending, too, do you think?’

  ‘I reckon it thinks so,’ Prophet grunted.

  ‘I would have thought you were too tired, after all you’ve been through.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  She got up, soaked the sponge, knelt down, and went to work on him with the sponge, giving assistance with her wonderfully full lips and tongue. By the time she was done, Prophet had discovered religion again, after all these years, if only for a little while.

  Clean and satisfied, he crawled into bed. He watched her undress before him, then curl up beside him, her naked flesh against his. They slept entwined in each other’s arms until the first light painted the window. Then they made love, very quietly but thoroughly, before she washed, dressed, and bent down to kiss him on the cheek.

  ‘I’ve waited a long time for a man like you, Lou Prophet,’ she whispered.

  He looked at her, blinking the sleep from his eyes. ‘You ... you know I can’t stay, don’t you, Cordelia?’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘That’s what makes you even more special.’ She straightened and walked to the door, where she stopped and turned to him with a mysterious smile in her eyes. ‘But you can come back whenever you want, and it’ll be like you never left.’

  Then she went out, and Prophet listened to her soft footsteps fade down the hall as he drifted back to sleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  PROPHET SLEPT DEEPLY for another hour and was awakened at around six-fifteen by two old codgers walking past his door arguing. Lifting himself onto his elbows with a groan, his thigh burning, he shoved his pillows up against the headboard, and lay back, arms folded across his belly.

  Cordelia was on his mind in all her bewitching tenderness. He smiled, remembering how she’d straddled him, sighing softly as she’d worked against him, her long hair in his face, her swollen breasts in his hands. He wondered whose room was directly beneath his and if they’d heard the bedsprings getting one hell of a workout so late last eve....

  Prophet chuckled at the thought, but not for long. There was work to be done.

  He sighed deeply and cleared his throat, scowling away the memory of Cordelia’s opulent breasts in his hands, and scooting higher against the headboard. It was time to give some thought to his next course of action against the Red River Gang.

  Pondering the situation, he remembered Louisa telling him to meet her in Fargo tomorrow. He remembered from his study of a map on a stage station wall some time ago that Fargo lay about fifty miles north of Wahpeton, also on the Red River of the north. Larger than Wahpeton, it had become a major river port for Dakota Territory as well as northwestern Minnesota. The Northern Pacific Railway had laid track through there as well, and the town had become a major stopping-off place for immigrants heading west.

  Had Louisa learned the gang was headed that way? She must have. How she had, Prophet didn’t bother to guess. The honey-haired Miss Bonaventure was pure-dee hell with the fires out, and if she told him to head to Fargo, you can damn well bet it wasn’t for a barn dance.

  Thinking of her, he smiled ruefully and shook his head. No seasoned lawmen had yet been able to sink their teeth into that gang, but here she was, knocking them off one by one. How she’d gotten by with it so far was a mystery. Prophet guessed that being such a sweet-talking, innocent-looking girl had helped. And so had her patience, not to mention her methodical, relentless tracking abilities.

  Also on her side was the keen yet subtle madness Prophet had seen in her eyes. The girl may have been only sixteen years old in body, but
what she’d seen happen to her family had made her soul as old as the moon and stars. He’d seen people age like that during the War Between the States—hell, it had happened to him—and he knew that once that innocence was lost, there was no getting it back.

  So Fargo it was, he thought, tossing his covers back and dropping his feet to the floor. In Fargo, he’d meet Louisa and they’d take it from there ...

  He dressed in a clean pair of denims and buckskin shirt, and stomped into his undershot boots as soft as moccasins, then wrapped his gunbelt around his waist and donned his hat. He descended the stairs and nearly ran into Cordelia coming out of the kitchen with a bowl of scrambled eggs.

  They smiled at each other lustily. Cordelia saw one of the regular boarders starting down the stairs and cleared her throat. She arranged an impartial expression and said, ‘Good morning, Mr. Prophet. Sleep well?’

  ‘I sure did, Mrs. Ryan,’ Prophet said, following her into the dining room and removing his hat. ‘Very well, indeed.’ He wanted to inquire about the condition of the girl, but knew it would have to wait until after breakfast. One did not inquire in public about such a delicate matter as rape.

  Prophet stepped up to the table and frowned when he saw three strange men seated amidst the regulars before the long, oval table covered with a white cloth, glistening china, and steaming coffee cups. The men examined him critically as Prophet reached for a chair, and the bounty hunter measured them in turn.

  They were all so young and well-dressed and carefully groomed, with such confident eyes and smiles, that they reminded Prophet of the young, green, well-bred cavalry officers he’d known back during the Little Misunderstanding. The resemblance was so keen, in fact, he nearly shuddered. The negligent leadership of such men—or boys, rather—had been responsible for the needless slaughter of so many of Prophet’s friends and family.

  ‘Mr. Prophet,’ Cordelia said, when she’d put down the egg bowl, ‘as you can see, we have three newcomers. They appeared last night, and Annabelle let them in. Gentlemen, would you introduce yourselves to Mr. Prophet and the other boarders while I fetch the rest of the meal?’