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

matter-of-factly.
    Prophet looked into the room
again, then returned his dubious eyes to the girl. ‘Jesus.’
    ‘ Yep.
I doubt he’ll be showin’ off his one-eyed snake
anymore.’
    Prophet sighed, shook his head,
and started back down the hall. The girl stopped in front of him,
extending her open hand. ‘I’ll take my gun back now.’
    Absently, still thinking about
the man in the bedroom, who had been punished thoroughly enough by
Prophet ’s
standards, he slapped the gun in the girl’s hand. He gave her a
long, amazed stare, then started back down the stairs.

Chapter Eight
    THE BARMAN WAS waiting at the
bottom of the stairs. ‘What the hell happened up there?’ he asked
Prophet.
    ‘ You
don’t want to know.’ Pushing past the man on his way to his table,
Prophet said, ‘Got a sawbones around here?’
    ‘ No.
Mrs. Jergens handles most of the medical problems.’
    ‘ Well,
you better get her,’ Prophet said, retaking his chair at the table
upon which his beer and half a shot of whiskey still
sat.
    ‘ I’ll
send someone for her, and get some help hauling these bodies
out.’
    ‘ There’s one more upstairs,’ Prophet said as the barman
headed for the door.
    When the barman had gone,
Prophet threw back the last of his whiskey and chased it with a
healthy swig of the flat beer. He heard steps on the stairs, and
the girl appeared at the newel post, gazing at the two dead men on
the floor before the bar. Her expression was one of interest and mild
admiration, not of the horror that would have been etched on the
faces of most girls her age— most women, for that
matter.
    ‘ Nice
shootin’,’ the girl told him at last.
    Prophet grunted. ‘Can I buy you a
drink?’
    The girl walked toward him,
blond curls bouncing on her shoulders, chin thong swinging against
her poncho. She stepped over the bodies, sidled over to a table to
Prophet ’s
left, grabbed a glass from it, and brought it over. She set the
glass on Prophet’s table and sat down in the chair across from
him.
    ‘ Already have a drink, thanks.’
    ‘ Sarsaparilla?’
    ‘ Yep,’
the girl said when she’d taken a sip.
    Prophet gave a sardonic chuff.
Looking at her sitting there sipping her red bubbly water, all
peaches and cream skin and blond hair and milk teeth, she could
have been on her way home from Sunday school. You never
could ’ve
guessed she’d sunk three .44 pills into one bad-man and left the
other minus his oysters.
    ‘ Figured a girl like you’d drink rye straight up with a
blood chaser.’
    The girl ’s face was expressionless.
‘Nope—just sarsaparilla for me, please. That stuff you’re drinkin’
tastes like badger pee and fuzzies the brain.’
    Prophet looked at her without
saying anything for several seconds. ‘What’s your name?’
    ‘ Louisa.’
    ‘ Louisa what?’
    ‘ Why?’
    Prophet shrugged. ‘Why
not?’
    ‘ I
don’t like men knowin’ anymore about me than they have to for
civilized conversation.’
    ‘ Okay,’ Prophet said with a sigh. ‘Then I suppose telling me
what you’re doin’ here and why you killed those two men upstairs is
out of the question?’
    ‘ Yep.’
She drained her glass and set it back on the table. Standing, she
said, ‘It was nice meeting you, Mr. Prophet.’
    ‘ Where
you goin’?’
    ‘ After
the others.’
    ‘ How
do you know where they are?’
    ‘ Because I’ve been following them for most of a
year.’
    Prophet frowned,
incredulous. ‘You have?’
    ‘ Yep.’
    ‘ Then
I suppose you know they raided Luther Falls yesterday
afternoon.’
    ‘ That’s right.’
    ‘ Where
in the hell were you?’
    ‘ Outside of town, in an old barn. I trailed ‘em to the
outskirts of town. I would’ve warned the sheriff—if there is a
sheriff—but I didn’t know where they were headed until they were
almost there.’
    Prophet stared at her again, as
if at a puzzle he couldn ’t begin to fathom. ‘Why is a nice-looking little
gal like yourself tracking a herd of gunnies