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

by Peter Brandvold

  Louisa saw that the other men were dismounting their horses, ripping the tack from the animals, and turning them into the corral. They moved slowly as though weary from the hard ride.

  As for herself, Louisa wasn’t sure she could move. Her butt and legs were numb, the small of her back felt as though a nail had been driven through it, and what hadn’t gone to sleep ached from all the jarring. In addition, her face was badly wind- and sunburned, and her eyes were full of grit.

  She nudged the duchess, who’d fallen asleep against Louisa’s arm. The other girl was curled up in the corner between the driver’s box and the left sideboard. The duchess gave a startled grunt and lifted her head.

  ‘What is it... oh ... no!’

  Several men, including Dayton Flowers, had now gathered around the wagon—dark figures moving wearily but with lascivious grins bunching their cheeks and bringing snickers up from their throats. Louisa’s temples throbbed with fear, and her throat was dry. She tried to stand, but fell back against the driver’s box.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said.

  ‘Day, help the ladies,’ Duvall said.

  ‘Be my pleasure, Dave!’ Flowers replied, climbing heavily into the wagon box with a witch’s cackle. Ignoring the women on either side of her, he went right for Louisa, bent down, grabbed Louisa’s arm, and brusquely tossed her over his shoulder, as though she were nothing but a sack of seed corn.

  Her back cried out, feeling as though it would surely snap like dry kindling, but Louisa ignored it, more worried the man would feel the holstered gun on her hip. Fortunately, he’d thrown her over his left shoulder, so the gun was away from him. Her bowie, however, was on her right hip, and another problem altogether.

  As he turned and jumped off the wagon, Dayton Flowers laughed again, patted her bottom, and said, ‘Dave, I like this country girl. Her bottom feels nice and so do her titties. I call dibs on this one.’

  He headed for the cabin, and as he walked across the yard and mounted the stoop, Louisa felt as though her bones were being ground to powder. She grunted and sighed with the pain, and Flowers seemed to enjoy it. He patted her bottom again, and when he stepped into the dark, musty cabin, where the smell of mice was so strong it nearly took Louisa’s breath away, he twirled in a circle several times, stumbling and almost falling.

  Louisa cried out and Rowers laughed. Then he stumbled toward the back of the place, kicked open a door, stooped through the low opening, and tossed Louisa onto a narrow bed that reeked of mildew. Her head hit the feeble, straw tick mattress hard, bouncing off the wood-slatted frame beneath, and the pain was so intense she saw red for several seconds.

  Suddenly, as she blinked her eyes, trying to see something in the black room, she was aware of Dayton Flowers kneeling beside her. She could smell the rancid sweat of the man, hear his labored breathing and his chuckles.

  ‘Let me see what you got here, little miss,’ he said, brusquely reaching down the neck of her tunic and blouse and roughly fondling her breasts. His coarse hands scraped her and chafed her, and she set her jaws against the pain, fighting the tears she felt welling from her eyes.

  She wanted to beg him to stop but would not, could not let herself do that. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how terrified she’d become.

  He stopped, finally, and removed his hands, when another man shuffled through the doorway, grunting as though carrying something heavy.

  ‘Day, where should I put the queen of England here?’ The man’s voice was loud and harsh in the quiet room.

  ‘Just throw her anywhere. There’s only one bed, and I’ve given it to the country girl with the nice teats. The queen can slum it with the mice.’

  ‘Okay,’ the other man said.

  There was a loud thump and a scream as the duchess was dropped on the floor. She began bawling then and did not stop when another man banged his head on the low doorway and cursed savagely as something else hit the floor with a thump and a female scream. That must have been the other girl. She gave several more loud, fervent screams, and as the floorboards jumped and rattled, Louisa figured that the man who’d banged his head on the door frame was kicking the girl into the room, cursing all the while.

  Above the cries of the women, Dayton Flowers said, ‘We’ll be back for some fun later on. First, we’re gonna get us some grub and rest. You girls might wanna tidy up a bit for the menfolk.’

  He and the other two men laughed and chuckled and jabbed each other mockingly, then went out and slammed the door.

  Dust and what sounded like mud chunks sifted down from the rafters. Wings beat over Louisa’s head, and she heard a bird’s frightened chirps. Lifting her head to see the window in the wall about ten feet off the end of her cot, she saw the wing-flapping silhouette of the bird as it tried to make its way through a broken pane. With a screech and a rattle of glass, it was gone, its exasperated cries diminishing as it fled this hellish hollow.

  Envying the bird, Louisa lay back on the cot, the pain in the back of her head slowly subsiding. Ignoring the weeping of the other two women and the growing cacophony of the men entering and beginning to make themselves at home in the cabin’s main room, she tried to get her fear under control enough to figure out a plan.

  There was a window in the wall before her. She could tell by the moonlight slanting into the room from behind her that there must have been a window back there, as well.

  Escape routes, they were—if she could get her arms and feet untied....

  She jumped when a gun barked in the other room. She tensed, her heart leaping and pounding painfully against her breastbone. The gun barked again, and she held her breath, listening.

  ‘Damn!’ a man cried, laughing. ‘Did you see that? A skunk!’

  ‘Did you get it, Dave?’

  ‘Think I nicked it before he got out through that hole there.’ Boots scuffled and chairs scraped the floor. Duvall’s voice again: ‘Millen, get some boards from the lean-to, and cover that hole. Fuckin’ skunks!’

  The main door opened and closed, and the voices settled to a low din. Shortly, pots and pans clattered, and the smell of a cook fire filtered into the tiny room in which Louisa lay on the cot, listening and thinking, trying to wriggle her wrists free of the rope binding them together behind her back.

  If she could only free her hands, she could untie the other two women and they could flee through one of the windows. At the very least, she’d have access to the revolver still secured to the holster on her hip....

  For an hour, she worked at wiggling her hands free of the ropes, her shoulders and arms aching with the effort, her back and neck going numb. Finally, she had the rope loose enough to slip the knuckles of her right hand through. She’d just accomplished the maneuver when boots pounded suddenly, and the door opened.

  ‘Hello, girls,’ Handsome Dave Duvall said, standing in the open doorway, silhouetted against the lighted main room behind him.

  Louisa froze, shuddering. She’d freed her hands from the ropes but she knew she didn’t have time to go for her revolver. She might—might!—get off one shot, but only one. She’d be dead soon after.

  ‘We had us a little bet,’ Duvall said. ‘Dayton here won. He’ll be taking you out to the lean-to, Little Miss. Me, I’m gonna stay right here’—he swung a bull’s-eye lantern around from behind him, holding it high before him, lighting the cramped room—’and have me a little fun with the little English girl.. . while the duchess watches. Hee-hee-hee.’

  Suddenly, he stepped back and sideways, and Dayton Flowers stepped around him and into the room. Giving a whoop, Flowers bent down and pulled Louisa over his shoulder and carried her through the door. Pretending her hands were still tied, Louisa hung down Rowers’ s sweat-damp back, glancing around at the men sitting around the room, drinking whiskey and smoking and grinning at her.

  If she couldn’t get away from Dayton Flowers, she’d have to endure each one of them, in turn, for the next several hours. The thought was as raw as the image of her
dying mother and sisters, and she turned her mind away from it and toward the hope that once she was outside, she could somehow escape Dayton Flowers, and run away to seek help for the other women.

  Rowers was across the room and on the stoop in three or four long strides. He stepped off the stoop, stumbling from drink, and headed across the dark yard to the lean-to. Once inside, he bent down, and Louisa fell off his shoulder into the hay. It was a soft landing, and she lay there, staring up at Rowers towering over her, breathing hard and balling his fists.

  Soft, white moonlight angled through the sashed window to his left, limning the side of his face and shoulder. Finally, he doffed his hat, tossed it aside, and unbuckled his gunbelt.

  ‘We’re gonna have us a good time out here, sweet girl. Yes, sir—just you an’ me.’ His voice was breathy with lust; Louisa could smell the fetid odor of whiskey on his breath. Combined with his sweat stench, it was enough to make her retch.

  As he hurriedly undressed, kicking off his boots, Louisa snaked her free left hand out from under her—slowly, carefully, so Flowers wouldn’t detect her movement. She wiggled the hand through the slit in the left side of her skirt, but stopped suddenly, clipping a horrified grunt when she realized her knife scabbard was empty!

  The knife must have fallen out, fallen through the slit in her skirt, when Rowers had been carrying her across the yard.

  Damn! Now she had no choice but to use her gun, which she could feel was still there in its holster, despite the fact of its noise.

  She’d fished it out of its holster and through the skirt slit just in time, shoving the Colt into the hay only a few inches to her right, away from the moonlight, her hand remaining on the grips. Flowers had just ripped out of his underwear, tossing the garment aside, and turned to her nude, silhouetted against the window, the moonlight laying a sheen across the sweat-slick hair curling off his chest, left arm, and thigh.

  Rubbing his hands together briskly, he said, ‘Now ole Dayton’s gonna show you a time you won’t soon forget!’

  His knees bent as he stooped toward her. She removed the gun from the hay, aimed it straight at the dark center of his chest, and pulled the trigger.

  The gun jumped and barked, the flames lighting up the lean-to for a split wink and filling the air with powder smoke. Rowers gave a jerk and a low grunt, and froze. He grunted again and sagged to his knees.

  ‘Wha—what the hell?’ He lowered his chin to look at his chest. ‘What the hell? You shot me?’

  ‘Think I’d let a greasy polecat like you grunt around between my legs?’ Louisa castigated the man as she scrambled to her feet, her muscles and legs moving sluggishly, painfully, and ran to the door.

  Leaving Flowers to die, resisting the urge to finish him with another shot to the head, she flung open the squeaky lean-to door and cut a look at the cabin. The other men had heard the shot and were already spilling onto the stoop, guns drawn and yelling.

  Louisa’s face flushed with panic and grief. Oh god, oh no . . . jeepers!

  She ran around the lean-to and into the woods behind, hearing the men behind her calling for Dayton. Her gun in her hand, she jumped deadfalls and wove between Cottonwood trees and rocks, pushed through spiky bramble, making her way toward the river murmuring in its bed only a few yards away.

  If she could get into the water, she might have a chance.

  ‘Hey, you guys,’ a man’s voice boomed behind her. ‘I can hear her in the brush back here. Come on!’

  She ran harder, but she knew it wasn’t fast enough. Her legs and feet were still cramped from the wagon ride, the muscles sluggish and jittery. Behind her, the men’s yelling grew louder and louder, and then she was hearing brush thrashing and twigs snapping under pounding feet.

  ‘Girl! I know you’re back here! You’re gonna die, girl!’

  It was Dave Duvall, his voice high-pitched with lunatic exasperation. It turned Louisa’s knees even weaker, and they almost buckled. But then she pushed through another bramble patch and saw the river winking silver in the moonlight.

  She made for it and started across, her heart sinking when she saw it was not deep enough to carry her downstream. In fact, it barely covered her ankles!

  She ran as hard and fast as she could, sliding on rocks and tripping over snags. Behind her, the sound of pounding boots grew louder, until she knew at least one of the gang members was closing. She was certain of it when she heard Dave Duvall.

  ‘You can run but you can’t hide, girl!’

  His voice was so loud and filled with such belligerence it made her eardrums shudder and her breath catch in her throat. He gave a whoop, and then she heard him splashing across the creek.

  Realizing she couldn’t escape him, she stopped and turned, clawing her revolver out of her skirt. She raised it, aimed at Duvall’s tall, dark, running figure outlined by the moonlight, and fired twice. As she did, Duvall gave a mocking whoop and dove to his left, dodging both shots, which made wet spanging noises as they ricocheted off half-submerged stones.

  He drew his own gun and fired quickly, the slug whistling past Louisa’s ear. Giving a cry, she wheeled, almost falling in the creek, and ran up the opposite bank, bulling through shrubs, which caught on her clothes, catching and tearing them, yanking her hair.

  When she’d run several more yards, she waited until she saw Duvall again—a quickly moving shadow amidst the shrubs—and fired three quick rounds. Not waiting to see if she’d hit her mark, she turned and ran through the trees. Suddenly, the ground gave way beneath her—she’d come to an old creek bed—and she fell hard and rolled to the creek’s rocky, brushy bottom, losing her gun in the process.

  ‘Oh ... no.... !’ she cried, knowing that without the gun she had no chance at all.

  Ignoring her scrapes and scratches, she ran her hands over the dark rocks, feeling for the revolver. She stopped when a rock tumbled down the slope behind her, and she heard breathing sounds. Turning slowly, she saw Duvall standing on the bank, both hands hanging at his sides, his silver-plated Colt winking in the moonlight.

  After what seemed like hours, he blew a ragged sigh and said in a low, menacing voice, ‘That wasn’t nice, killin’ Dayton. That wasn’t nice at all.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  TO LOUISA’S SURPRISE, and partly to her chagrin, Duvall did not kill her.

  Instead, he leapt down the bank, grabbed her painfully by the arm and half-dragged her up the bank, back across the creek and through the trees, summoning his men. Louisa cried out against Duvall’s excruciating grip and against the pain in her knees and shins scraping along the ground.

  Most of the men were already in the cabin yard when Duvall and Louisa got there. Others were filtering back through the trees behind the lean-to. One man came out of the lean-to and said grimly. ‘Dayton—he’s deader’n a doornail, Dave.’

  Duvall dragged Louisa to the cabin. He opened the door and heaved her inside. She flew across the floor and landed in a heap at the base of the square-hewn center post.

  The red-faced, wide-eyed Duvall followed her in, his men seeping in around him, and jerked his finger at Louisa angrily. ‘You’re gonna pay for that, Little Miss! You hear me? You’re gonna pay for that!’

  ‘Here... I’ll finish her right now,’ said one of the men, walking up to Louisa and drawing his gun.

  ‘No!’ Duvall said. ‘That’s too easy. Way too damn easy!’

  He stared at Louisa for a long time as she huddled against the center post, wishing he’d end it once and for all, knowing he wouldn’t. .. knowing she’d be alive a lot longer tonight than she’d want to be. She stared back at him and was vaguely surprised at his scrutiny, as though he were seeing her for the first time.

  His men stood around him. Several had rolled and lighted fresh cigarettes; others were pouring drinks or tipping back bottles, glowering at the pretty little killer in torn clothes on the floor. They all shuttled their gazes to Duvall, awaiting his next move. The air was heavy with the stench of their smoke, brea
th, and sweat.

  ‘Say, boys,’ the gang leader finally said, curiously thoughtful. ‘Have we seen this girl somewhere before?’

  Several glanced at him, wonderingly.

  ‘What’s that, boss?’ one of them said, clearing his throat.

  Duvall’s eyes lingered on Louisa, whose heart was beginning to pound even harder. ‘Have we seen this little girl. .. this innocent little girl . .. somewhere before?’

  There was a pause filled with the quiet sounds of the gang’s breathing and smoking.

  ‘Not sure what you mean, boss,’ another man said from behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘I’ve never seen her before.’

  ‘Well, I think I have,’ Duvall said. ‘Sure ... I’ve seen her. I’ve seen her several times in some o’ the towns we pulled through. Don’t you boys remember seein’ an innocent little blonde in a brown poncho and ridin’ a black horse. A Morgan horse, like the one Giff McQueen stole from that breeder down in Arkansas?’

  Another pause. All eyes were on Louisa now.

  ‘Just sittin’ Giff ‘s horse here an’ there, waitin’ on street corners or sittin’ on steps or lounging around on loafers’ benches in front of mercantiles an’ such ...’

  ‘What are you sayin’, Dave?’ one of the men asked him, frowning.

  ‘I’m sayin’ this girl’s been trailin’ us for a long time now. Layin’ for us. Any of you ever wonder why none of the gang that broke off from us never showed up again?’

  Duvall looked around at the faces surrounding him and Louisa, a bemused grin pulling at his wide mouth, his lantern jaw set like a blacksmith’s sledge.

  ‘What about Norall and McQueen? Jimmy Dahl and Fred Barnes? What about Leach and Sully? They were just gonna take ‘em a little snoozer south of Fargo. Did they ever show up at Cora’s?’

  Duvall looked around the room, at the faces regarding him with faintly quizzical eyes. Cigarette smoke puffed and webbed under the low rafters through which the sod roof bowed.

  ‘Guess we just figured they sorta got sidetracked, kinda,’ someone said.