He thought of Louisa. How had they ever gotten her subdued? They must have practically killed her, because that would be the only way she would have gone along for their ride. Unless she’d gone willingly ...
Prophet wouldn’t have put it past her. She was just determined and careless enough to get herself killed.
When Prophet felt the horses had rested enough, he mounted Mean and Ugly and headed off along the tracks of the Red River Gang, leading Louisa’s Morgan. He’d ridden only about twenty minutes or so, cantering and walking the horses so he wouldn’t play them out, when he turned to see a rooster tail of dust lifting in the distance toward the train.
Wondering who that could be, he kept the horses to a fast walk, letting the rider catch up to him. When he turned again ten minutes later, the rider had come within seventy yards. He, too, was leading another horse, a feisty roan.
‘Well, now, what in the hell?’ Prophet carped to himself, yanking his dun to a halt and staring back at the approaching, redheaded Mcllroy in a snuff-colored Stetson.
‘What did you think I was going to do—sit around in a warm bath in Bismarck?’ the young man said as he approached, reading the disdain in Prophet’s expression. ‘I’m a deputy U.S. marshal, for chrissakes. This is more my business than yours, Mr. Prophet.’
Knowing there was no point arguing about Mcllroy’s presence and intention of tracking the gang, Prophet said, ‘Did you get the story from the Brits?’
‘That they have the Duchess and two other women? Yep. I told the sheriff about your suspicions before I left Fargo, so he and his deputies should be along shortly. I doubt they’ll be much help, though. We’re nearly to the Cass County line, the end of their jurisdiction.’
‘Good,’ Prophet said. ‘We don’t need any more dust kicked up back here than we already got.’
Annoyed and confounded, Mcllroy’s brows wrinkled and his freckled face flushed. ‘If you had your druthers, you’d really rather track them alone?’
‘If I had my druthers I’d track them with a handful of hand-picked military scouts or a couple regiments from the U.S. cavalry armed with cannons—preferably from a Southern battalion. Anything less, I’d just as soon go it alone. Nothing personal, but you’re just too green.’
With that, Prophet neck-reined Ugly around and continued riding at a fast canter.
Mcllroy caught up to him and said, ‘I think you judged me too quickly, Prophet, on the basis of one mistake. I don’t need to ask you for another chance, because I’m the one in authority here. But because you’re the one with more experience, and because I for one don’t want to track these men alone, I am asking you to give me one more shot at proving myself.’
Prophet looked at the deputy, who did not look at him but rode face forward, stiff-backed in his saddle. Around his mouth and eyes, his face looked like rotten beef. He didn’t have to be here, Prophet thought. He could be on the train back to Yankton with the bodies of his friends. You had to give him something for his pluck, anyway.
‘Okay, okay,’ Prophet said, and turned forward in his saddle.
Staring northwest, he frowned. Something had moved ahead of them.
‘You see that?’ he asked the deputy.
‘Yep. Two men afoot.’
‘Oh, shit,’ Prophet said, knowing who it was.
‘What?’ Mcllroy said, reaching for his sidearm.
‘Keep it holstered.’
The two men were walking about fifty feet apart, one behind the other. The first man was tall and portly and carrying a shotgun, thick auburn locks bouncing on his shoulders. The second was tall and slender and wearing a black suit and coat, a fat necktie flopping back on his shoulder. He was bald. Both men were hatless.
Prophet and Mcllroy approached the second man first. Looking exhausted, he was yelling at the first man, ‘Duke! Duke! You must stop! We’ve no horses and there are Indians about!’
The first man, the duke, yelled something without turning around and kept walking, almost marching, his shotgun barrel resting on his shoulder.
The sound of Prophet’s and Mcllroy’s horses turned the second man around, fear etched in the senator’s long, flushed face adorned with a gray spade beard. ‘Oh! Who ... what... ?’
‘It’s all right, Senator,’ Prophet said. ‘We’re friendly. We’re after the hombres who took the duchess. What in the hell are you two doing out here afoot?’
Prophet and Mcllroy had halted their horses before the senator, who bent over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. He looked like he was about to expire.
‘We ... he,’ the senator said, glancing at the duke who had stopped and turned toward Prophet and Mcllroy, his brows crumpled with curiosity. ‘He wanted to go after the savages who kidnapped his wife. I just... I ran along to try to get him to stop. They’d kill him for sure, and ...’
‘Oh, button your mouth, Andrew!’ the duke bellowed, walking quickly toward Prophet with his bird gun still on his shoulder. ‘You just came because I promised to invest in that beef-packing plant of yours in Deadwood Gulch, and you thought you had to make a show of fetching my wife or I’d pull out of the deal!’
‘No!’ the senator rasped. ‘I came to fetch you back, Duke. What on earth do you think you can do afoot, except get yourself scalped by Indians?’
The duke marched up to the senator, brought his shotgun down off his shoulder, grabbed it by the gold-plated receiver and forearm, and swung the stock soundly against the senator’s head. With a shocked cry, the senator went down like a windmill toppled by lightning, arms flying.
‘Never could stand a coward,’ the duke said in his limey accent. ‘Couldn’t stand ‘em in Delhi, and I can’t stand ‘em here.’
‘Damn,’ Prophet intoned with a wince, staring down at the idle senator. ‘You’re like to have killed him!’
‘Who are you?’
Prophet turned to the duke, who was eyeing Prophet and the deputy suspiciously. Before the bounty hunter could say anything, Mcllroy said, ‘I’m Ezekiel Mcllroy, U.S. deputy marshal out of Yankton, Dakota Territory. I’ve been tracking the Red River Gang for some time, and—’
‘I need your extra horse,’ the duke said matter-of-factly, heading for the roan the deputy had tied to the tail of his black.
Mcllroy glanced at Prophet, who shook his head vehemently.
‘Uh ... I don’t think so, sir,’ the deputy said, trotting his horses in a wide half-circle around the determined royal.
Red-faced with exasperation, the duke aimed his bird gun at the deputy. ‘I want your extra horse. I need him to fetch the duchess. I’d pay you for the animal and your trouble, but that gang of hellions took everything I had on my person. Turn the animal loose, I say. Turn him loose!’
‘If we’re gonna get your wife back, we need all four horses,’ Prophet said. ‘Now put that cannon away, ye crazy limey!’
‘Put that gun away, Mister,’ the deputy intoned. ‘I told you who I am, and if you mess with me further, I’ll be obligated to arrest you.’
‘My wife is young and beautiful,’ the duke persisted. ‘If those men have their way with her, I’ll... well, I cannot let that happen, you see. My god! She’s the duchess! My bride! A virgin until the night of our wedding! Now turn that horse loose, or I’ll shoot you where you sit!’
Prophet ground his spurs into Ugly’s flanks, and the horse bolted forward, hammering the duke with a well-muscled shoulder. The duke cried out as his shotgun lifted, booming skyward, and fell face down under Ugly’s hooves.
‘Come on, Deputy!’ Prophet called to Mcllroy. ‘We’re burnin’ daylight!’
Caught off guard by Prophet’s maneuver, Mcllroy stared dazed at the trampled, cursing Brit. Seeing Prophet galloping westward without looking back, Mcllroy spurred his own horse after the bounty hunter.
When he caught up to Prophet, he said, ‘Shouldn’t we see if he’s seriously hurt?’
As if in reply, a boom lifted on the wind behind them. Both men turned to see the d
uke lowering his shotgun from his shoulder as powder smoke puffed around his head. He yelled something as he breeched the gun to reload.
To Mcllroy, Prophet said, ‘You go ahead if you want, but he looks all right to me!’
Then he lowered his head and spurred Ugly northwest at a sod-churning run.
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘OH, NO! OH. God! For the love of the crown, help me! Help us all! We’re going to perish, certainly!’
With her hands tied behind her and her ankles tied before her in the bouncing wagon box, Louisa turned to the woman who’d been yelling and sobbing off and on since they’d been taken from the train a good half hour before.
‘Be quiet,’ Louisa warned the duchess. ‘You’re giving me a headache.’
‘Ohhhhh!’ the duchess sobbed, her head between her upraised knees.
She was tied as Louisa was, and, like Louisa, sat with her back against the driver’s box, facing the wagon’s rear. With her rich, brown tresses hanging down from the once-taut coils piled atop her aristocratic head, and her blue silk gown torn and soiled, she didn’t look much like a duchess anymore.
She lifted her head, turning to Louisa with her tear-streaked face beseechingly. ‘I’m going to die! Don’t you see? They’re going to kill us all, and I’ll never see my dukey or little Timmy or Mum or Poppa or Gran—ever again! Ev-er!’
‘Don’t worry. They’re not gonna kill us for a while yet,’ Louisa said under her breath, regarding the dull-eyed men plodding along behind the wagon. ‘They’re gonna have plenty of fun with us first—you can bet the pot on that.’
‘Ohhhhh!’
Louisa’s flip tone belied her fear, the shudders that leapfrogged her spine every two minutes or so. Her hands and feet were bound, and she was in the firm, deadly grasp of the gang who’d murdered and ravaged her family. They were all about her, in fact—Handsome Dave Duvall and Dayton Flowers included, heading up the pack before the wagon.
What, oh what, had ever made her board that train!
Louisa turned her head away from the shrieking duchess, and saw the other woman the gang had kidnapped, sitting on Louisa’s left. Slightly younger than the duchess—probably Louisa’s age—the young woman had passed out again, and her head lolled back on her shoulders. Little ringlets of flaxen-blond hair hung to her small, powder-white breasts only partially concealed by her dainty pink gown. Her delicate, small-boned face was drawn and pale and dust-layered, and her fine jaw bounced slightly with the wagon.
Louisa was glad the girl was unconscious. She couldn’t have endured the screams of both women at once.
Looking around again, Louisa regarded the dusty riders surrounding the wagon—a hawkish, mean, ugly, unshaven lot of gun toughs. The Red River Gang they were, and this was the first time Louisa had seen them all together up close.
They rode their saddles with lazy arrogance, slouching, smoking, and squinting against the dust and the westering sun, confident in their villainy. It was their aim, Louisa knew from what she’d overheard in their conversation with the duke earlier, to hold the duchess for ransom, until the duke could come up with fifty thousand dollars.
Where and when the duke was supposed to make the drop, Louisa hadn’t heard; she’d been too far from the men and still woozy from the braining she’d taken when the train had stopped so suddenly following the explosion that had ripped up the rails.
The part about the drop didn’t matter, anyway. Louisa knew that either she or the Red River Gang would be turned toe down long before any of that occurred. She still had her gun under her skirt, as well as her knife. None of the gang members had thought to check the pretty little girl with the honey-blond hair for hideout weapons. As soon as one or more of them tried to ravage her as they’d ravaged her mother and sisters, Louisa would make them damn sorry they hadn’t been more cautious.
She turned to her left and saw that one of the dust-soaked riders was staring at her, a lewd light in his eyes.
‘What are you looking at?’ she asked him haughtily, covering her fear with a taut upper lip.
‘You, sweet girl.’
‘You’re not my type, sir, nor me yours.’
To the man riding beside him, he said, ‘This one here’s not only perty, but she’s got spunk. Did you hear how she said that?’ The man lifted his chin and scrunched his eyes. ‘‘You’re not my type, sir, nor me yours.’’ He slapped his thigh and guffawed.
‘Yeah, I saw. I like the duchess, myself. I don’t know why we took this one when we had all those rich Englishers to choose from.’
‘‘Cause this one was pertier than them Englishers, and cause she tried to knock Dayton’s block off when he grabbed her out o’ that car. Ha! Ha! How could anyone resist a girl like that!’
‘I like the duchess myself,’ the second man repeated, wiping his mouth with his shirt cuff. He looked at the girl to Louisa’s left. ‘And this girl here—her titties are about to jiggle out of that little dress she’s wearin’—like little white pears!’
‘What the hell are you two doin’?’ Handsome Dave Duvall asked, slowing his horse to let the wagon catch up to him. When he was riding even with the box, between the other two gang members, he said, ‘I told you boys to leave these girls alone.’
‘Ah, come on, Dave,’ the first man said. ‘We’re just lookin’! Besides that, I don’t see no harm in havin’ some fun.’
‘If I turned you boys loose on these women now, they’d be dead before nightfall. Besides that, I don’t want any of you ever touching the duchess, understand? Her husband ain’t gonna pay the ransom to get her back if she’s defiled.’
‘Okay, Dave,’ the second man said. ‘But what about these other two? I mean, we brought them along for the fun of it, didn’t we?’
‘That’s right, Grogan,’ Duvall said with a grin. ‘And you can have all the fun you want with ‘em tonight, after we reach the cabins. In the meantime, we’re gonna ride like hell, understand?’
‘You think someone’s followin’ us, Dave?’
‘Doubt it, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry, now isn’t it, Chess?’
‘I reckon,’ Chess allowed.
Duvall gave the two men a wink and turned to Louisa with a thoughtful frown. ‘Who in the hell are you, anyway, honey? What were you doin’ on that train with all those uppity Englishers?’
Thinking fast, Louisa said, ‘I... I was hired to help the cook. You know, to peel potatoes and serve coffee and such. Please, mister, won’t you let me go?’ She lowered her head and feigned a sob, not a difficult job under the circumstances. ‘I’m so frightened.’
Duvall sidled his horse to the wagon, nudging Grogan out of his way. Keeping pace with the bouncing contraption, he smiled lustily at Louisa, reached down, and took her chin in his hand. He baldly appraised the two bulges in her tunic, then stared into her eyes, grinning with only his mouth. His gaze was dark, his cheeks coloring slightly. A wintery chill sent a shiver the length of her body. The duchess leapt into another crying jag, and Duvall, wincing at the ear-piercing shrieks, straightened in his saddle and galloped back up to the front of the pack.
Grogan snickered and turned to Louisa. ‘Just better hope he don’t go for your toes, Miss—that’s all I got to say!’
Grogan elbowed the man called Chess, adding, ‘Poor Cora Ames. Ha! That poor woman’s gonna be walkin’ with a limp till the day she meets St. Pete. Ha! Ha!’
He and Chess shared another round of laughter, then gradually turned their attention to cigarette-building. When they’d drifted off, Louisa looked behind her and over the riders following the wagon. She hoped she’d see a sign of Prophet back there, but all she saw was more of this godforsaken prairie, creased here and there with shallow ravines and studded with occasional cottonwoods.
Had the bounty hunter found her horse at the train station in Fargo, and realized her ploy? She didn’t know. Even if he had found the horse, it didn’t mean he’d guessed she’d hopped the duke’s train. But she hoped so. If not,
she was all alone out here, with only the single Colt on her hip and the bowie knife on her belt—against twelve of the owliest-looking savages she’d ever laid eyes on.
And then there was Handsome Dave Duvall, as square-jawed handsome as he was evil.
The hell of it was, she didn’t think she’d have done such a thing unless she’d known she had Prophet to back her up. Maybe she’d been better off back when she was depending only on herself....
Maybe it was better if she always just rode alone.. . .
One thing she knew for sure, though—if she was going under the green, she was damn sure going to take a handful of the Red River Gang with her.
She rested her head on her knees and tried squirming into a more comfortable position. But there was no such thing as comfortable when your wrists were tied behind your back, your ankles were tied before you, and you were riding a wagon straight to hell....
Chapter Twenty-Five
IN SPITE OF the wagon’s constant jarring and pounding, Louisa fell into a doze. She snapped out of it when the buckboard suddenly stopped. She jerked her head up, looking around.
Night had fallen. They were in a hollow in the hills through which a stream or a river coursed, through tall cottonwoods silhouetted against a pale, rising moon.
Bringing her gaze lower, she saw what looked like a lean-to attached to a log corral. To her left, she saw a sod cabin with an extension made from milled lumber. It was a dark, rambling place that smelled of dank earth and rotten wood and mouse droppings, and Louisa shrank from it like she would a dungeon tended by ogres.
‘We’re home, my lovelies,’ came a voice out of the darkness. A figure moved toward the wagon, and Louisa recognized Dave Duvall. ‘Time to dismount and enter our humble abode. Admittedly, it isn’t much, but then, we don’t get many visitors out here.’ He chuckled, pleased with himself.
Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) Page 19