Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) (27 page)

‘
You
thinking that’s their target?’

‘
I
haven’t seen anything more likely.’ Prophet thought of something.
‘I seen a train pullin’ into town about twenty minutes ago. You
don’t s’pose that was the one, do you?’

‘
I
think it says in the article there that it’s due in around
eleven.’

‘
They
could’ve been ahead of schedule.’

‘
A
train?
Ahead
of schedule?’

Mcllroy hadn
’t completed his last sentence
before Prophet had bounded out of his chair and headed for the
door, weaving around the tables.

‘
Well,
wait for me, damnit!’ the deputy exclaimed as he hurriedly shoveled
his papers into a cowhide valise, dropped some coins on the table,
and followed Prophet out the door.

Outside, the bounty hunter
turned left and ran toward the railroad tracks paralleling Main
Street. When he
’d passed a lumber yard, he looked westward down the shiny,
new rails, and scowled. A red caboose was diminishing in the
distance, dwindling darkly, swallowed by prairie and crowned with
coal smoke. The faraway whistle sounded forlorn.

Prophet cursed and ran across the rails,
angling over to the red brick station house. Several people had
gathered there and were staring westward down the tracks.

‘
Please tell me that wasn’t the duke’s train,’ he told a
pleasant-faced gentleman in a minister’s collar and floppy black
hat.

‘
Why,
sure it was!’ the minister said with a mild grin. ‘Got to see the
duke close up, too—at least, as close up as his muscle men would
let us get. I wanted to offer a prayer, but don’t you
s’pose—?’

‘
It
said in the paper he wasn’t due in till eleven!’ Prophet
groused.

‘
They
made better time than they expected comin’ out of Minneapolis,’
said a man dressed in a blue coat and uniform hat staring
westward.

‘
You
the station agent?’ Prophet asked the man.

‘
That’s right.’

‘
Where’s the train stoppin’ next?’

‘
Oh,
they won’t be stoppin’ again till Jamestown for water.’

‘
Any
way to get a message to them between here and there?’

The agent beetled his heavy,
salt-and-pepper brows at Prophet, peering at him sharply.
‘Only way would be
to telegraph the station in Valley City, then signal the train to
stop. But—’

‘
How
far is Valley City?’

‘
Pret’
near seventy miles. Say, who are you, anyway, and why would you
wanna—?’

‘
Never
mind,’ Prophet said, staring thoughtfully down the rails. The
caboose had diminished to a small, black dot, and then it faded
altogether.

Behind the bounty hunter,
Mcllroy approached running, gripping his valise in his right hand,
his frock coat winging out behind him. Breathless, he asked,
‘Was that it? Was
that the duke’s train?’

The station agent was eyeing
them both suspiciously.
‘Say, why in the hell are you two so damn
interested in the duke’s train?’

‘
It’s
about to be robbed,’ Prophet said.

Mcllroy cleared his throat and
judiciously added,
‘Well, at least, it’s a distinct possibility. We don’t know
that for sure.’

‘
Yeah,
we do,’ Prophet groused.

Wheeling and heading south for
the livery barn and his horse, he stopped suddenly and turned to
his right. Tethered before the station house was
Louisa
’s
black Morgan. Curious, Prophet walked over to the horse, then raked
his gaze in a full circle around the station.

He called her name, but it was
a wasted breath. She was nowhere near. She
’d been here, though. That was
obvious.

Mcllroy approached,
frowning.
‘What’s with the horse?’

‘
Belongs to a friend of mine.’

‘
Oh,
yeah? Well, where is he?’

‘
She’s
on the train.’ As Prophet said it, he knew it was true. She’d seen
the duke’s train pull into town, realized the train was the Red
River Gang’s next target, and somehow got her sneaky self
aboard.

Prophet chuckled without humor,
shaking his head. Running a big, brown paw across his face, he
said,
‘Damn,
girl... you’re gonna get yourself killed yet.’

‘
Your
friend aboard the train is a woman?’ Mcllroy was thoroughly
befuddled. ‘I don’t understand.’

Prophet looked at him
seriously.
‘All you need to understand, Deputy, is that train is gonna
be robbed by the Red River Gang. And they won’t just rob it,
either. They’ll probably butcher everyone onboard. You best run and
inform the sheriff.’

‘
Where
are you going?’

Prophet had untied the
Morgan
’s
reins from the hitch rack and was jogging toward the livery barn,
the Morgan following at a canter. ‘Where the hell do you think I’m
goin’? I’m gonna get my horse and follow the train!’

Louisa climbed over the rail at
the end of the caboose and stood peering at the town dwindling
before her, the flat, virtually treeless prairie rushing in on both
sides. Glancing behind her, she saw the door into the caboose.
There was a window in the door, and she crouched, backing up to the
wall beside the door so she wouldn
’t be seen by the man or men
inside.

She dropped to her butt to
avoid the wind swirling under the roof
’s slight overhang, and bit her lower
lip. Okay, she was aboard the train. Now what was she going to
do?

For starters, she decided,
she
’d try to
make her way to the passenger cars and look for the Duke. If she
could only get past his brutes and talk to him, she might be able
to convince him the train was headed for hell with a capital H. If
not, well, she’d tried....

There wasn
’t much the Brit could do to
her except have her expelled from the train at the next water
stop—if they made it that far, that was. She doubted the man,
arrogant as he’d appeared on the station platform in Fargo, was
haughty enough to have her removed while the train was still
moving.

The worst that could possibly
happen was that the gang would murder her when they murdered the
others. But by God, she
’d die triggering her trusty six-shooter, and she
wouldn’t die alone!

Now, to get to the passenger cars ...

Looking up, she saw the metal
rungs climbing the caboose
’s rear wall. Standing unsteadily as the train
rocked and swayed, clattering over the rail seams, she grabbed the
lowest rung, and climbed. When she poked her head over the roof,
she was pleased to see a catwalk stretching from the caboose all
the way to the locomotive, traversing every car.

But when she
’d hoisted herself onto the
roof, she realized getting to the duke’s car wasn’t going to be as
easy as it had first appeared. There was nothing to hold onto, and
when she tried to stand, with the train rushing forward at a good
twenty miles per hour and rocking and swaying this way and that,
jerking over the seams, she nearly lost her balance and flew over
the side.

Deciding crawling was the safest strategy,
she got down on her hands and knees and began putting one hand
before each knee. When she came to the front of the caboose, she
climbed down the ladder, crossed the vestibule, and began climbing
the first of the two stock cars. Crawling into the wind was getting
easier now, and before long she was nearing the end of the second
stock car, and hearing voices raised in jovial laughter.

She was approaching the
duke
’s
car.

‘
What... who the hell is that?’ inquired one of the Brits as
Louisa descended the ladder on the stock car’s front
wall.

When she
’d stepped onto the vestibule,
she turned to the covey of well-dressed gents smoking stogies and
standing about the open bay of the duke’s natty car. Several were
holding shotguns with richly gleaming stocks. Some were polishing
the guns with white cloths while others thumbed wads into the
chambers—apparently about to start pot-shooting birds along the
right-of-way.

All froze, however, and turned
wide-eyed, astonished looks at the girl who
’d just appeared before them dressed
in a plain gray skirt and brown poncho, her long hair tussled by
the wind, her hat hanging down her back by the cord around her
neck. Her face was flushed, her eyes red from windburn.

The breeze tussling the red
locks hanging down from his Texas hat, the duke edged forward,
scowling and rolling his half-smoked stogie to the right side of
his mouth.
‘Who are you?’ he said, with a slight, emphatic pause
between each word.

Louisa was about to answer but
stopped when what sounded like an explosion from somewhere ahead of
the train lifted on the wind. It was followed by the high-pitched
shriek of the train
’s brakes, throwing Louisa and the duke’s party off their
feet.

Louisa was vaguely aware of being tossed
like a doll over several overstuffed chairs and into a wall before
everything went black.

PROPHET RODE HARD for several
miles before he halted Mean and Ugly, dismounted the exhausted
beast, and mounted Louisa
’s Morgan, which he’d been leading by its bridle
reins. Then he rode hard for another several miles before topping
the rise and spying the train halted on the tracks below, puffs of
black coal smoke issuing from its funnel-shaped stack.

He
’d heard the dynamite explosion
followed by the flat cracks of pistol and rifle fire a good twenty
minutes before, and he’d tried to keep from imagining what had been
happening aboard that train in the meantime. He knew the dynamite
had been used to blow up the tracks and cause the engineer to stop
the train. He could guess what the pistol fire was all
about.

Now he produced his field
glasses and did a quick scan of the train, which sat a hundred
yards west, its engine sighing and panting like a steel dinosaur
taking a respite from battle. Several bodies littered the grade
amidst well-dressed men running around aimlessly. The Red River
Gang, it appeared, had already gotten what they
’d been after, and
left.

Leading Mean and Ugly, Prophet
gigged the Morgan down the hill. He was about fifty yards from the
train when he noticed several of the well-dressed gents, who were
no doubt from the duke
’s entourage, form a scraggly line and raise
shotguns to their shoulders. They stood there,
shoulder-to-shoulder, looking like a small, portly, out-of-uniform
regiment waiting for Prophet to get within bird gun
range.

Scowling and impatient, Prophet
reached into his saddlebags for a white handkerchief. He tied the
handkerchief to the barrel of his Winchester, and held the gun high
as he rode slowly toward the train, hoping one of the Britishers
looking dazed and disheveled didn
’t go ahead and shoot him
anyway.

The men kept the butts of their shotguns
snugged against their shoulders and watched him critically, but no
one fired.

‘
Easy,’ Prophet said. ‘I’m here to help.’

The Britishers appeared to believe him. Two
of the four shotguns went down, and the other two men relaxed
considerably.

‘
Are
you a policeman?’ a man in blood-streaked, snow-white muttonchops
inquired.

‘
Something like that,’ Prophet said, casting his gaze about
the train, half appraising the damage, half looking for Louisa.
Five men lay dead along the tracks, three of the bodies covered
with blankets. Up near the engine, another was being tended by a
man and a woman.

‘
What
happened here?’ Prophet asked the Brits.

One dropped his shotgun to his
side, wiped a stream of blood from his lip—they all appeared to
have been roughed up some if not pistol-whipped a lot—and
said,
‘Bandits attacked us. They stopped the train.
They—’

‘
They
took the duchess!’

‘
Took
her?’ Prophet said. ‘Why?’

‘
They’re holding her for ransom,’ another man carped,
patting his mussed hair down.

‘
They
got all our money and valuables, shot the duke’s bodyguards, and
took the duchess!’

Prophet was still glancing around for
Louisa. He heard women crying aboard one of the passenger cars, but
there was no sign of Louisa.

‘
Where’s the duke?’ Prophet asked, turning his head back to
the men standing before him.