Free Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) by Peter Brandvold

tighter to his side, extending the barrel before
him. Slowly, he poked his head around the corner, gazing up the
last flight of stairs to the second story.
    No one was there. He could hear
a man ’s
muffled groaning. The air was fetid with gunpowder.
    Prophet started climbing again, one step at
a time, hearing the groans and the creaking of the steps under his
boots. He was halfway to the top when a hatted figure suddenly
appeared with a gun.
    ‘ Die,
devil! Die!’ rose a girl’s shriek, followed by three swift
gunshots.
    Prophet ducked and threw himself to the side
as one bullet ripped his hat off and another singed his cheek.
Losing his footing, he fell back down the stairs, hearing the whine
of a bullet slicing the air over his head and chunking into the
landing wall, at the foot of which he piled up like dirty
clothes.
    ‘ Lady,
hold on, goddamnit!’ Prophet yelled, scrambling to his feet. ‘I
ain’t one o’ them!’
    He looked up the stairs. A
fair-faced girl stood there in a black, round-brimmed,
bullet-crowned hat and a tattered wool poncho. Blond hair fell over
her shoulders, but what interested Prophet most was the fact that she was
busy reloading her silver-plated revolver.
    ‘ Hold
your skirts, kid—I ain’t one o’ them!’ he yelled again as he
started up the stairs, tripping in his haste and pushing himself
off his hands.
    The girl thumbed the last
cartridge into the cylinder and was bringing the gun up, thumbing
back the hammer, as Prophet reached her. Knocking the gun aside
with his left hand, he bulled into her, throwing her backward off
her feet. He went down on top of her and tried wrestling the gun
out of her iron like grip. She cursed and punched him with her left
fist, hard.
    ‘ Goddamn you! Goddamn you!’
    Flinching and cowering, Prophet
crawled up her body and gained his knees. Finally, he managed to
restrain her left arm with his right knee. It took both his hands
and the strength of Goliath to peel her fingers open and to finally
remove the revolver. When he did, flinging it away, she erupted
with a whole new string of curses, and her knees went to work,
pummeling his back. Her right hand came up, thrashing him and
opening a cut on his lip.
    ‘ Goddamn it!’ he complained, lowering his head against the
renewed onslaught and pinning her right fist to the floor with his
left knee.
    Now he was high enough on her body that her
knees could no longer reach him. She still writhed beneath him, but
to no avail. Her face was red with hate and anger, tears of
heart-searing rage watering her hazel eyes. He held on and waited
for her to wear herself out.
    Which she eventually did, but it took
awhile. Finally, her muscles relaxed and her eyes focused on him
through an acrimonious haze.
    He said, ‘Will you listen to reason
now?’
    She lifted her head and
scrunched her eyes up angrily. ‘Do I have a choice?’
    He climbed to his feet, her gun
in his right hand. ‘Ow,’ she said, sitting up and massaging her wrists. She
looked at him accusingly. ‘If you ain’t one o’ them, who are
you?’
    ‘ Lou
Prophet. Bounty hunter. I was in Luther Falls when they robbed the
mercantile. Been tracking the group till these four broke off and
headed here.’
    He looked down the hall behind
him and saw the body of the man who ’d come up looking for Barry. Prophet
looked at the girl and jerked his thumb at the dead man. ‘Your
work?’
    The girl
didn ’t reply
to this. ‘You take care of the other two downstairs?’
    ‘ Yup.
What happened to... ?’ Prophet moved down the hall, at the end of
which was an open door. He stood in the doorway and looked into the
room, where a nude man lay thrashing around on his belly, his hands
cupping his groin. He was crying into a pillow. The bed was soaked
in bright red blood.
    Prophet turned to the girl at
the other end of the hall, who was busy straightening her skirt and
adjusting her poncho. ‘What the hell did you do to him?’
    ‘ Gelded him,’ she said