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

by Peter Brandvold

  Stunned and incensed but not quite knowing why, Louisa stared at him lying there with his big, muscled arms crossed over his broad, hairy chest which pulled the threadbare union suit taut across his rounded shoulders.

  ‘Fine, then,’ she said, finally.

  She got out of bed, stomped over to the light, blew it out, stomped back to bed, and crawled under the covers.

  ‘Fine.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THE NEXT MORNING, Louisa woke with a start and reached for her revolver, but it was not where she normally kept it when she slept, in the holster looped around her saddle horn. Not only that, but she wasn’t sleeping on her saddle, which she’d done nearly every night since hitting the vengeance trail.

  She was in Prophet’s hotel room.

  Remembering that she’d looped her shell belt and holster around the bedpost after returning from the privy during the night, she grabbed the weapon from the holster and thumbed back the hammer as she tossed a quick glance to her left and saw that Prophet was gone, his covers thrown back.

  The knock sounded again.

  She turned to the door, aiming the revolver. ‘Who is it?’ she snapped.

  A muffled voice sounded behind the door.

  Scowling sleepily, Louisa threw back the blankets, brushed her hair from her eyes, and headed for the door, gun extended, wincing at the burn in her right calf.

  ‘Who is it?’ she repeated impatiently.

  ‘Bath water, ma’am.’

  Louisa thought it over for several seconds; she hadn’t survived this long being gullible. Finally, she turned the key in the lock and cracked the door. In the hall, a black boy of about eight or nine stood holding a bucket of steaming water. A white towel thrown over his shoulder, the boy stared up at her wide-eyed. When he saw the gun Louisa had poked through the crack, his eyes widened even more, and he shuffled back with a start.

  ‘Don’t shoot me, missy! The gen’leman tol’ me to bring ya up some bath water at seven o’clock sharp!’

  ‘He did, did he?’ Louisa said dryly, knowing the boy meant Prophet.

  ‘Yes’m. He give me two bits. Said to tell you he’d meet you at eight-thirty at Hung Yick’s cafe for breakfast.’

  ‘Did he say where he’d be till then?’

  ‘No’m.’

  Louisa glanced up and down the hall, then stepped back, drawing the door wide. The boy entered the room, set the steaming bucket on the braided rug beside the bed, hung the towel on a wall hook, grabbed the thunder mug by its handle, and brushed past Louisa on his way back out, eyeing her warily.

  When he was gone, Louisa closed the door, sheathed her revolver, and regarded the steaming pail. She hadn’t had an indoor sponge bath in a long, long time. In spite of being slightly miffed by the bounty hunter’s presumption, she was grateful for the hot water. It would indeed feel good to have a bath.

  The bounty hunter.

  Where in the hell was Prophet, anyway? He must have dressed and slipped off without a sound, for Louisa prided herself on waking at the rustle of a pine cone falling a hundred yards away.

  That bed must’ve been more comfortable than she’d first thought. Or had she felt safer and thus more able to relax, with him near... ?

  She repressed the idea, for this was no time to start setting store by some down-at-heel bounty man. But as she stripped out of the dusty clothes she’d slept in and began sponging her naked body with warm water from the pail, avoiding her bandaged calf, she couldn’t help thinking of him ... the easy way he carried himself... that rueful glimmer in his eyes ... those big arms straining the seams of his threadbare union suit. He’d shown gentleness and sensitivity, odd for a man, when he’d cleaned her wound last night.

  He did seem different, didn’t he ... than most of the other men she’d come to know and hate ... ?

  When Louisa had finished her slow, luxurious sponge bath, and dressed, she saw by her timepiece that she still had forty-five minutes before she had to meet Prophet at the Chinaman’s place. Deciding to spend the time riding around town looking for the Red River Gang’s target, she left the hotel, ignoring the spiteful stare of the old biddy at the front desk, and headed for the livery barn.

  She rigged up the Morgan and left her payment in the office, pleased that the drunk stableman was nowhere to be found, and walked the horse up and down Broadway. She found three banks and an express office, but none looked like they’d provide a gang of venal cutthroats with the kind of stake she’d heard discussed in Wahpeton.

  She’d just crossed to the south side of the Northern Pacific tracks when she heard a train whistle, and turned to see a locomotive panting into Fargo. A big bruiser of a beast, it was, throwing black smoke and cinders every which way, filling the air with its burning-coal stench, and making the ground tremble under the Morgan’s feet.

  Chuff! chuff! chuff! it coughed as it slowed, brakes squealing and couplings crashing. Trains were still new enough to this region that they still attracted admiring stares from people on the street, Louisa saw as she glanced around. But in the faces of two old men with gray mustaches perched on the mercantile’s loading dock, she thought she saw something more than just mild esteem.

  She followed the men’s bright, wistful gazes back to the train, which was moving about five miles per hour now as the locomotive approached the water tank beyond the depot. She frowned, surprised to see that this was no ordinary passenger train with weathered gray cars cramped with gaunt-faced immigrants in homespun clothes and squawking chickens and boisterous children hanging out the windows.

  In fact, this was no immigrant train at all.

  Eminently grand, this one included five passenger cars, a Pullman sleeper, and two stock cars between the coal tender and the caboose. The passenger cars were a rich mauve with yellow trim. Brass fittings and lanterns gleamed in the climbing prairie sun. All the windows were nearly twice the size as on any ordinary train, and behind the sparkling glass most of the cars were as uncluttered as Mexican ballrooms.

  At the rear of each passenger car, there was an open bay area enclosed by brass rails trimmed in striped bunting fluttering in the breeze. In one such open-air vestibule, ladies dressed like queens in crinoline and lace sat holding multicolored parasols over their feathered hats. In the bay area of the car directly behind the one that carried the ladies, portly gentlemen in silk top hats, derbies, and camel-hair frocks stood or sat, smoking stogies as they regarded Fargo with expressions of mild amusement. Several held goblets on their knees. One man wearing a big, Texas-style hat with the brim pinned up on one side, said something with a supercilious grin and a grand gesture indicating the street before them. The others roared.

  Soon the men’s car passed beyond Louisa, screeching to a halt before the depot. Stopping before her was the second of the two stock cars, and peering through the slats she saw horses. Thoroughbreds and Arabians, all.

  The Morgan twitched its nose at the stock car from within which whinnies and nickers issued along with the smell of horse dung and alfalfa. As she stared at the car, Louisa’s heart began beating resolutely against her sternum. Adrenaline spurted in her veins. And then her heart was picking up until her face grew hot and her blood was fairly racing.

  Twisting back in her saddle, she looked around the street. Then she reined the Morgan around and spurred him over to the mercantile, where the two old townsmen still sat under the awning drinking soda water from bottles.

  ‘Excuse me, gentlemen, but can you tell me who’s on that train?’

  ‘Don’t you read the papers, young lady?’ the man on the left said with twinkling, washed-out eyes. ‘Why, that’s the Duke of Dunston-Abbey! He’s the one in the Texas hat—ha! ha!’

  ‘Who’s the Duke of Dunston-Abbey?’

  The old man shrugged and glanced at his friend puffing on a corncob pipe. The second man said, ‘Some Britisher, they say. Part o’ some big syndicate that has ranches all over the West. He’s headin’ to Montany with his wife the duchess and some o’
their Britisher pals. ‘Parently he just bought a brand-new ranch for the little woman. Her birthday’s coming up, don’t ye know. Hee-hee-hee!’

  ‘Blast it, Foley!’ the first man said, turning sharply to his friend. ‘My birthday’s comin’ up, an’ no one bought me a ranch in ole Montany!’

  The men slapped their thighs and cackled like geese. Frowning, her heart throbbing in her temples, Louisa reined the Morgan back into the street, walking the horse toward the depot as she studied the train grandly shining in the sunlight. Several workers spoke loudly as they swung the spout from the stilted water tank over the locomotive, and dropped a lever.

  The ladies and gentlemen from the train were disembarking as though from a gala, and the red-suited porters in billed caps were helping them down the steps, bowing to each in turn with nervous grins. As Louisa reined her horse before one of the several hitching racks before the red brick station, she watched the man in the Texas-style hat.

  The Duke of Dunston-Abbey was a large man with flowing auburn locks and a mustache whose ends swung around to meet his brushy muttonchops. He was pale with freckles, a double chin, and small, steel-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose. The cream Stetson matched the fringed deer-hide coat hanging past his hips. From the perfect tailoring, Louisa could tell the coat had been sewn and purchased in an Eastern shop, for nothing so impeccable would be found west of St. Louis.

  The man rose up on the balls of his feet and crossed his arms on his broad chest as he spoke loudly and with supreme arrogance to the men gathered around him—men who laughed loudly and nodded vigorously at everything the duke said. Apparently, the men and the ladies twittering under the parasols in the shade of the depot overhang were just stretching their legs while the water tank filled, and would be off again in a few minutes.

  Studying both groups from the Morgan’s saddle, Louisa wondered how much money was on that train. Why, in the pockets of the men and in the purses of the ladies milling on the platform there had to be more than Louisa would ever see in her life! And when you took into account what was probably stowed away in the luggage and added it to the worth of the horses ... damn!

  Certain she had discovered what had attracted the Red River Gang to Fargo, Louisa whipped her head around, searching for signs of a possible attack. The gang could be anywhere, waiting for just the right moment.

  Or would they wait until the train had steamed out of town a ways, beyond the immediate help of the law?

  Deciding the latter was probably the most likely course of the gang’s action, Louisa looked around again, this time for Prophet. She saw no sign of him—only several townsfolk, children and dogs included, gathering for a look at the Duke and Duchess of Dunston-Abbey. By now, Prophet was probably waiting for her at the Chinaman’s place.

  Deciding something had to be done and done soon, Louisa climbed down from the Morgan, tied him to the hitch rack, and made her way toward the Duke still holding court on the brick platform with his entourage.

  When she was about thirty feet from the group, a brute in a black suit and bowler suddenly stepped in front of her, blocking her way. Holding up his huge hands, palms out, he said, ‘Hold on, there, Miss. Where do you think you’re going?’ It was the first British accent Louisa had heard close up, and the novelty of it shocked her.

  ‘Huh? What?’

  ‘Where on earth do you think you’re going?’

  ‘I have to speak to the duke.’

  ‘You have to speak to the duke?’ The brute chuckled. ‘Yes, well... I don’t think so.’

  ‘Please, I have to—’

  ‘Run along now, Miss. That’s a good girl.’

  ‘Listen,’ Louisa said, trying to peer around the brute’s wide frame to catch the duke’s eye, ‘this train is going to be attacked by the Red River Gang!’

  ‘Huh? What? Attack? The duke’s trine?’

  ‘Yes, the train,’ Louisa said, trying futilely to push past the brute whom, she noticed, wore a Colt Lightning in a shoulder rig under his open frock. ‘Please let me speak to the duke.’

  The brute was about to say something when a man spoke behind him. ‘McDormand, do keep these people back, won’t you?’

  The brute half turned, glancing around at several scruffy-looking townsmen crowding onto the platform for a closer look at the duke and his fancy train.

  ‘Yes sir, right away, sir,’ the brute said with a tense smile.

  He turned to Louisa and sighed peevishly. Putting his hands on her arms and shoving her back toward the station house, he said, ‘All right, Miss, I’m not joking around now. Get back and stay back or I’ll throw you in leg irons.’

  He gave her one last, resolute shove, then turned and jogged out ahead of the crowd of curious townsfolk, flinging his arms out from his sides to usher them back. Another brute made his way over from the other end of the station house to help, and soon they had the crowd shuffling backward toward the street.

  Looking up and down the platform, Louisa saw two more bodyguards stationed along the train, facing the street. Both were big men with bulges under their jackets, and while they looked capable enough, unless there were at least ten more of them on the train, there weren’t enough of them to foil the Red River Gang’s imminent raid.

  Louisa shifted her eyes between the duke and his entourage and the group of women chattering to her left, under the station house’s overhanging roof. The engine sputtered and sighed, sending jets of steam skittering over the cobbles.

  Louisa was obviously not going to be able to talk to the duke, and even if she did, she wouldn’t be taken seriously. No one took a lone girl in farm clothes seriously. So what she had to do, she decided, was somehow get aboard the train.

  Why she needed to be aboard the train, she wasn’t sure.

  It was just an irresistible impulse and, before she knew what she was doing, she was wandering northward along the track, strolling along the platform toward the engine, whistling and gazing about her with mindless fascination— just a country girl admiring the duke’s fancy train.

  As she approached the first bodyguard down this way, she gave him a big smile and strolled on past. She gave the second bodyguard the same nonthreatening smile, pretending to be merely amazed by the big train. Since she wasn’t doing anything to rile the duke or duchess, the bodyguard just nodded at her amiably and let her go.

  She wandered on around the engine, past the men in bib overalls filling the boiler, and down the other side of the train, flicking coal cinders from her poncho. When she was about halfway down the train’s length, a voice rose from the other side.

  ‘All aboard, please! All aboard, please, gentlemen and ladies!’

  Alone on this side of the platform, Louisa quickened her pace and began searching for a spot to board one of the cars. Since the passenger cars were fairly open, she knew boarding one of them without being noticed by the embarking passengers would be impossible.

  Boarding the sleeper was out of the question, too, for steel doors sealed this side of the vestibule.

  As she jogged, stumbling along the cinder apron, the locomotive gave a high-pitched whistle. The couplings clattered and the cars screeched as the steel drivers began grinding, the wheels turning, and the cars began moving north down the rails.

  Louisa stopped, panting, and studied the train as it moved past her, picking up speed. Coal smoke choked her. Her hat whipped off her head and hung down her back by its cord.

  ‘Damn oh damn oh damn!’

  The stock cars pounded by, whipping her with a breeze rife with ammonia and hay.

  ‘Oh, come on, damn you. Come on!’ she pleaded, looking for anything to grab onto.

  Here comes the red caboose. Her last chance.

  In desperation, she leapt for the rail on the caboose’s vestibule, and grabbed it with both hands. Half running, half hanging from the rail, she got her feet up on the dimpled iron platform, and climbed....

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  IT WAS PAST eight-thirty before Prophet
had the Chinaman’s place in sight.

  He’d spent about a half hour visiting with the Cass County sheriff, but to no avail. The portly lawman, who seemed a bit too dull-witted for the job, could offer no clue as to what the Red River Gang might be targeting in Fargo. He figured it was either one of the banks or the express office or—Prophet had had to suppress a snort at this—the ladies’ millinery on Third Street.

  ‘Mrs. Norman does a right smart business!’ the man had exclaimed after seeing the doubt in Prophet’s eyes. ‘Why, ladies from as far away as Grand Forks come here to buy her hats!’

  ‘Maybe you’d better post a deputy at each of the banks, anyway—just to be on the safe side,’ Prophet had said as he’d opened the office door to leave.

  The sheriff stood, his jowls coloring and shaking with anger. ‘I will do that, but I don’t like your attitude, young man. And I don’t appreciate being told what to do by a lowly bounty man!’

  The sheriff had said more, but Prophet hadn’t heard it, because he’d already closed the door behind him and was making his way up the street to check out the banks.

  Now, having checked them and deciding two of the three were possibilities, if slim ones, he pushed through the door of Hung Yick’s, looking around for Louisa. The place was busy with shop workers and railroad men, but Prophet didn’t see Louisa.

  Glancing at the clock on the wall, he frowned. It was five minutes past eight-thirty. Had the black boy at the hotel forgotten to tell her about breakfast?

  Deciding to go ahead and order—maybe she’d show up late; she was a woman, after all—he headed for one of the two empty tables at the back. He paused when he saw the red-haired deputy Mcllroy, sitting at a table in the corner, a half-empty plate and papers before him. He was writing on one of the papers and didn’t look up.

  Prophet strode that way. ‘Mind if I sit down?’

  Mcllroy looked up, and Prophet winced. The man’s face had swollen around the stitches a doctor had sewn, and just looking at it made Prophet’s own face ache.