Free Staring Down the Devil (A Lou Prophet Western #5) by Peter Brandvold

countess wouldn’t mind sleeping in a
bed for a night.”
    “No, I
am sure she would not,” the Cossack agreed. “To be honest, Mr.
Prophet, I would not mind a bed myself. This old Russian has gotten
spoiled since coming to your country.”
    “It’s
settled, then.”
    Before
Prophet could ride ahead, Sergei held up a hand to waylay him. “I
feel I must remind you, my friend Lou, that the countess is . . .
how do you say . . . ?”
    “Off
limits?” Prophet asked with a tight smile.
    “Yes,”
Sergei said, returning the smile as cold as a Russian winter. “Off
limits.”
    “Isn’t
that rather up to the countess?”
    “No,”
was the Russian’s taut reply.
    “I
see,” Prophet said. Heeling the dun into a lope, he added under his
breath, “I just wonder if she does.”
    “ How you doin’, Barstow?” Bobby St.
John asked the wounded rider as he pushed off his hands into a
sitting position. St. John had been drinking in Two-Boulder Creek,
and now he adjusted his eye patch over the empty socket and
loosened his bandanna.
    “My
knee’s all shot to hell,” Barstow complained. “Look at me bleed!
I’m like to bleed dry!”
    Barstow was a
hefty lad with straight brown hair cut high around his scalp. His
face was flushed and perspiring, his eyes bloodshot, from the pain
of his bullet-shattered knee.
    “Just
hold on, Bar,” Ned Jamison said. He was sitting with his back to a
rock, cleaning his Winchester.
    Two
other survivors of their failed attack last night sat nearby.
“Squirrely” Jack Nye was tending a flesh wound in his arm, and the
other man, the huge, green-eyed mulatto, Kevin Kimbreau, was
drinking coffee and eating jerky.
    Counting Bobby St. John, a total of five men had survived the
attack.
    “Hold
on?” Barstow raged, wincing through his pain. “You hold on, damn
your hide anyway! This hurts like hell. I need a
doctor.”
    “We
ain’t got no time for a doctor,” Bobby St. John said. “We got a job
to do.”
    “Leave
the damn coach!” Jamison said. “Can’t you see Barstow’s bleedin’
dry?”
    “Squirrely” Jack Nye, always cool as a November breeze,
chuckled. “Hell, he’s gonna die, anyway. Why waste time gettin’ him
to a sawbones? I’m with Bobby. I say we overtake that friggin’
coach. I ain’t passin’ up that much money, not to mention that much
woman.”
    Nye looked around
the group. The others looked back at him. St. John was grinning. In
spite of his earlier sentiment to the contrary, Jamison appeared to
be considering it. Like St. John, the olive-skinned Kevin Kimbreau
had already made up his mind. He sipped his coffee and chewed his
jerky, blinking dully at Nye.
    “No,
goddamn you!” Barstow said. “You can’t leave me here to die! Ole Ed
wouldn’t o’ left one o’ his boys to die!”
    “Champion’s dead,” St. John growled.
    “Yeah,
he’s dead,” Kimbreau agreed.
    “Stupid asshole fouled up good and true,” St. John continued.
“He an’ that damn kid. Liked to get us all kilt.”
    “Goddamn you sons o’ bitches!” Barstow raged. “You can’t do
this to me. Me and Ed — we was the ones who started this group in
the first place! You can’t leave me here to die!”
    Ignoring his friend Barstow, Jamison turned to St. John. “That
Russian and that bounty hunter — they’re a tough tangle.
    “So
you’re sayin’ we should let ‘em go? Nye asked
accusingly.
    “Yes!”
Barstow yelled.
    Ignoring the
wounded man, Jamison shrugged his shoulders.
    “I say
we get the Russian lady,” Kimbreau said. He grabbed his crotch and
flashed his big, white teeth, his green eyes flashing.
    Barstow turned over on his side, grabbing his bleeding knee
and panting. “You can’t leave me,” he intoned, his voice growing
weaker.
    “All
right, we won’t leave you,” St. John said. Casually, the one-eyed
Texan removed his revolver from his holster and hefted it in his
hand. He glanced at Nye, who smiled agreeably. Then St. John
thumbed back the Remington’s