Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) (11 page)

‘
Get
your hand off my gun,’ she warned Prophet. ‘This animal raped my
mother and sisters.’

MacDonald gazed at her with
wide-eyed fear and incredulity.
‘Huh? What are you talkin’
about?’

‘
You
know what I’m talkin’ about, you dog. Back in Nebraska. Last year.
I saw it all—or enough of it, anyway,’ she added darkly. ‘And
you’re gonna die for your part in it, just like all the others are
gonna die.’

MacDonald looked beseechingly
at Prophet, who still had a grip on the girl
’s gun. ‘I don’t know what
she’s talkin’ about.’

Prophet gazed at the man,
remembering the raid in Luther Falls, his own anger returning like
kerosene dribbled
on a guttering fire. ‘You don’t, eh?’ he grumbled
skeptically.

‘
Release my gun,’ the girl ordered Prophet.

Prophet turned to her.
Sympathetically, he said,
‘I’m sorry about what happened to your family, but
I can’t let you shoot this man in cold blood. I know he deserves to
die, but you can’t do it.’

Louisa
’s eyes flared angrily. ‘Just see if
I can’t! He murdered my family!’

‘
You
can’t judge him, Louisa. As tempting as it is, it ain’t your
place.’

‘
What
about the two men you killed with that scatter-gun back in
Campbell?’

‘
That
was different. They drew on me. I was ready and willing to take
them alive and haul ‘em before a judge, but it came down to either
them or me.’ Prophet shook his head. ‘You can’t kill a defenseless
man, Louisa. It ain’t right. I won’t let you do it.’

With a sudden tug, he jerked
the gun from her hand. She gave an angry grunt and cursed him,
watching as he tucked the revolver behind his own cartridge
belts.
‘I’ll
return this to you when you’ve calmed down.’

She stared at him, fuming, then
stomped off through the trees toward her horse. Prophet waited
until he was fairly certain she hadn
’t gone to get the rifle he’d noticed in
her saddle boot, then said to MacDonald, ‘You worthless pile of dog
shit!’

The last thing in the world
he
’d wanted
to do was to be in the position of defending a man such as this. As
much as he knew MacDonald deserved to die, his letting Louisa drop
the hammer on him would have been the same thing as Prophet doing
so himself. And one thing he’d never let himself do, for as long as
he’d been collecting bounties on wanted men, was allow himself to
play the tempting roles of judge, jury, and executioner. Because
once he got a taste for it, he knew, there would be no stopping
himself, and before he knew it he’d become no better than the men
he hunted.

MacDonald looked up at him and
grinned, reading his mind. It was too much for Prophet, and,
without thinking, he drew his hand back and smacked the outlaw hard
across his jaw, whipping the man
’s head sideways against the
tree.

‘
Ow!’
the man cried. ‘That hurt!’

‘
Yeah,
well, there’s more where that one came from,’ Prophet groused,
cutting the man’s tethers and jerking him to his feet. ‘Move! I
wanna hit Wahpeton before sundown.’

MacDonald laughed as Prophet
pushed him toward his horse.
‘Then you wanna be dead before
sundown.’

‘
How’s
that?’

‘
‘
Cause the whole gang’s gonna be there,’ MacDonald
said through a grin. ‘The whole damn bunch!’

WHEN PROPHET CAME to the edge
of the woods leading MacDonald
’s horse, Louisa was waiting there astride her
Morgan. ‘Shit,’ Prophet said. ‘I was hopin’ you’d ridden on. I
don’t have time for craziness, girl.’

‘
I
don’t go anywhere without my revolver, Mr. Prophet.’ She extended
her hand for the gun.

‘
So
you can shoot my prisoner here?’ Prophet said, grabbing his saddle
horn and pulling himself atop his hammerheaded dun. ‘No,
ma’am.’

With her customary bald
impudence, the girl said,
‘If I still wanted to kill him, I could plug him
with my Winchester. Could’ve already done it, as a matter of fact—
just as you were coming out of the trees.’

Prophet looked at her
tiredly.
‘Where did you learn all this stuff, anyway—shootin’ and
ambushin’ and cuttin’ men’s balls off? You’re only
seventeen.’

‘
It’s
a tough world out here, Mr. Prophet.’

Slouched in his saddle,
favoring his wounded arm that was giving him tremendous pain,
MacDonald looked wary.
‘Whose balls did she cut off?’

‘
Man
name of Barry,’ Prophet told him.

‘
Barry?’

‘
I
think that was his name.’

MacDonald blinked with
horror.
‘That little girl cut Barry Little’s balls off?’

‘
He
was appropriately named,’ the girl quipped, flashing another of her
icy smiles, then gigging her horse beside Prophet, who had begun
heading west.

They rode for an hour in
relative silence, the only sounds the chirping of birds in the
trees along the river and the painful sighs and groans issuing from
MacDonald, who rode behind Prophet and the girl on a lead rope tied
to the tail of Prophet
’s horse.

The day was warm and bright,
and they stopped to water their horses in the river. When they were
heading out again, Prophet turned to Louisa Bonaventure with a
question that had been on his mind since he
’d found out who she was and what she
was after.

‘
So
Louisa, you’ve been on the vengeance trail for a year now, and
you’ve killed five of the men you’re after. What makes you think
you can get them all?’

‘
‘
Cause I’ve given myself over to it,’ she said
matter-of-factly. ‘And because I don’t have anywhere else to go or
anything else to do. And because I know the souls of my folks won’t
rest until I’ve accomplished this task.’

‘
Why
don’t you just turn it over to the authorities?’

She laughed caustically,
swinging her head and tossing her hair out from her slender
neck.
‘The
authorities, eh? The authorities haven’t been able to stop these
men in the five years they’ve been raiding. Not even the marshals
out of Fort Smith—Judge Parker’s boys—were able to do it. The ones
that chase them either end up dead or out of their jurisdictions,
and, lost and afraid, they head home with their tails between their
legs.

‘
Besides, that,’ she continued before Prophet could ask his
next question, ‘I’m better equipped than the ‘authorities’ are.
That gang can smell the ‘authorities’ from a hundred miles away.
None of ‘em has any inkling I’ve been on their trail—sometimes only
a half mile behind! Even if they did, they wouldn’t know who I was
or what I was up to. I’m just a girl, see? That’s why it’s easy for
me to sneak up on them and put a bullet in ‘em or stick a knife in
their necks.’ She sighed. ‘It takes time, though,’ she added. ‘I
swear, I have to have the patience of Job sometimes.’

‘
To
wait for ‘em to split up, you mean?’

‘
Then
to catch up with the rest again,’ she said with a nod, dramatically
blowing air through her lips. ‘They can be a trial, that
bunch.’

Prophet was regarding her
uncomprehendingly as they rode, stirrup to stirrup, along the trail
to Wahpeton. At last, he whistled and shook his head.
‘Miss Louisa,
you’re the crowned queen of vengeance, if I ever knew
one.’

‘
Yessir, I am,’ she said, extending her open hand to him.
‘Now, how ‘bout returning my Colt?’

‘
So
you can play God with ole MacDonald back there?’ Prophet shook his
head. ‘Not on my watch, queenie.’

‘
I
don’t have to play God with ole MacDonald anymore,’ the girl pertly
replied. ‘The devil came and got him about fifteen minutes
ago.’

Startled, Prophet whipped
around in his saddle, placing his left hand on the cantle and
darting his gaze at the outlaw. MacDonald was slumped forward on
the speckle-gray, his face buried in the horse
’s mane. He didn’t appear to be
breathing, and the speckle-gray was tossing its head, its
white-ringed eyes filled with an instinctive aversion to
death.

Prophet clucked and sucked his teeth. Then
he threw Louisa her gun and dismounted to dispose of the dead
outlaw.

An hour after Prophet had
finished burying MacDonald, a job Miss Bonaventure proclaimed the
biggest waste of time since the invention of alcohol, they paid a
wizened little man in a black stocking cap fifty cents to ferry
them and their horses across the Red River, still swollen with snow
melt. As they crossed, Prophet found out from the man that
he
’d ferried
eight men and a girl across the river about three hours
before.

‘
They
were all looking for a good time in Wahpeton tonight, sure enough!’
the man cackled, shaking his head.

‘
There
much in the way of fun to be had in Wahpeton ?’ Prophet asked with
a skeptical air.

Glancing sheepishly at Louisa, the little
man sidled up to Prophet and whispered in his ear that there was
one tavern and two whores—both German girls—but that the lack of
amenities had never stopped the farmers from having a good time
when their wives would let them out of their potato fields. He
wheezed, cackling, his one tobacco-colored tooth glinting like a
raisin in the sun.

‘
The
town have a sheriff?’ Prophet asked.

‘
Sure
it does,’ the man said, offended. ‘It’s the county
seat!’

‘
Much
obliged,’ Prophet said as the ferry scraped the river’s west shore,
nearly knocking them all, including the horses, off their
feet.

When the ferryman had dropped the ramp,
Prophet and Louisa led their horses across it and onto the grassy
bank near several flooded ash and cottonwood trees and a few old,
gray cabins where woodcutters for the riverboats probably lived
when the Red lay within its banks.

They splashed through a slough
and into the little town of Wahpeton, not much more than a wide,
muddy main street lined with hangdog-looking stores before which
supply wagons sat. Men in farmers
’ garb crossed the street between stores,
and several glum-looking blanket Indians stood out front of a
blacksmith shop, apparently getting the wheel of their dilapidated
wagon repaired.

The Indian group was composed
of three men, two women, and four children. The children were
running around in the mud alongside the shop, chasing chickens. The
men were smoking and staring at Prophet and Louisa as the strangers
passed before them. The women stared, too, their faces as
expressionless as the men
’s.

Prophet pulled up beside the blacksmith
working on the wheel.

‘
Where
can I find the sheriff?’ he asked the stout, balding man, who did
not turn to look but momentarily ceased hammering the wheel onto
the axle.

‘
One
block west, turn right. It’s the log cabin beside the
bathhouse.’

He jerked his head up sharply
when a chicken squawked, then turned to the Indian men lounging in
the shop
’s
open doors. ‘I told you to keep your damn kids away from my
livestock!’ the blacksmith complained.

One of the women turned to the mud-splashed
kids and said something in Sioux, only slightly raising her voice,
and all four kids stopped suddenly and looked at her.

‘
Much
obliged,’ Prophet said to the blacksmith, who did not reply but
only started hammering again on the wheel.

As Prophet and Louisa walked
their horses along the street, glancing from side to side for signs
of the men they were after, Louisa said,
‘What do you want the sheriff
for?’

‘
It’s
his town,’ Prophet said. ‘He should know if there’s badmen about,
shouldn’t he?’

‘
What’s he gonna do about it?’

‘
I
reckon that’s up to him,’ Prophet said, adding, ‘If there’s one
thing I learned in my years as a bounty hunter, it’s to never step
on a lawman’s toes. Most of ‘em hate bounty hunters the way it is.
But you get between one and his quarry without consultin’ with him
first. . .’

Prophet let it go at that, giving his head a
resolute wag.

‘
I
don’t think you have to worry about that around here,’ Louisa said.
‘The Red River Gang has a way of sendin’ local lawman into the
hills lookin’ for their mommas.’

Prophet brought his horse to a halt when
they came to a cross street. Looking left, he saw what appeared to
be a saloon about a block away. The hitch racks before the place
were crowded with horses—more than a dozen of them, all craning
their heads around to watch the loud freight wagon passing behind
them into the vast, flat prairie beyond town.