Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) (15 page)

‘
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.

‘
Lou,
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.

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....