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

like them?’
    ‘ I
have my reasons.’ She turned and started for the door. ‘Now I best
get after the others.’
    When she ’d left, Prophet sat there, his
head swirling. Finally, he finished his beer, got up, and walked
outside. The girl was heading out of town on the black Morgan that
had been hitched to the rack. When she made the outskirts, she
heeled the gelding into a gallop, and was soon swallowed up by the
brown grass and rolling prairie, heading north.
    Prophet turned to his right and
saw the barman heading toward the saloon with two men in bib-front
coveralls. ‘Sorry for the trouble,’ Prophet said to the barman as he
untied Mean and Ugly’s reins from the rack.
    ‘ Wait
a minute, Mister,’ the barman called. ‘You best wait for the county
sheriff. You got some explainin’ to do.’
    ‘ You
saw it,’ Prophet said, mounting up. ‘You explain it.’
    He reined the dun around and
kicked him into a trot. At the edge of town he reined Mean and Ugly
northward and kicked him into a ground-eating gallop.
He ’d ridden
nearly half a mile before the girl came into sight. She’d slowed
her horse into a canter, which made it easier for Prophet to catch
up to her.
    When he was about fifty yards
behind her, she heard him and turned around, reaching through a
slit in her skirt—for the gun, no doubt. She halted the action when
she recognized Prophet, and turned back in her saddle to scowl over
the Morgan ’s
ears.
    ‘ What
do you want?’ she groused as he drew abreast of her.
    ‘ Same
thing you do,’ Prophet said. ‘The Red River Gang.’
    ‘ Why?’
    ‘ ‘ Cause I was in Luther Falls when they rode in and
shot up the town. They kidnapped a girl, the daughter of the couple
who ran the mercantile. They not only shot the girl’s parents in
cold blood, but they shot the sheriff, too. A nice old fart named
Arnie Beckett.’
    ‘ You
live there?’
    ‘ No, I
was just passin’ through. But I seen it happen. And since there
ain’t no more law to go after those men, I’m doing it myself. I’m
sort of in the profession, you might say.’
    The girl sighed. ‘Well, I’m sure
there’s plenty of bounty on their heads. They’ve cut a wide swath,
that bunch.’
    ‘ I’m
not after the bounties,’ Prophet said.
    The girl looked at him
pointedly. ‘Neither am I.’
    ‘ You
know, I had a feeling you weren’t,’ Prophet said with an ironic
wince. ‘Well, I told you my story. What’s yours?’
    The girl rode along in silence
for a minute, obviously pondering her response. Finally, she
said, ‘They
killed my family.’ That’s all she said, and she didn’t turn to look
at him, but kept her gaze straight ahead at the rutted wagon trail
they were following.
    ‘ Where? When?’
    She sighed heavily. ‘Last year.
Nebraska.’
    Prophet looked at her, waiting
for more. No more came. Finally, he said, ‘Well, what in the hell made you
think you could run them down? You’re just a girl, for chrissakes.
I bet you aren’t seventeen.’
    ‘ I am
seventeen. And being ‘just a girl’ has come in mighty handy a time
or two.’
    ‘ A
time or two?’
    ‘ Actually, three times so far.’
    Prophet tipped his hat back
from his forehead impatiently and scowled at her. ‘What are you
saying?’
    Louisa shrugged. ‘I’ve already done
away with three of ‘em. Just waited for the group to split up and
went after ‘em one at a time. One I stabbed in a privy outside
Julesburg, Colorado. Another one I caught with a whore in Deadwood
Gulch. And the third one, Jimmy McPhee was his name, was trying to
get into my bloomers when he stopped to help me with my horse I
told him had come up lame. That was in southern Dakota, outside
Sioux Falls. Ever been there?’
    ‘ Once
or twice,’ Prophet grumbled, staring at the girl,
mystified.
    ‘ Nasty
place, ain’t it? I think some Saturday night the sheriff should
lock all the owlhoots in the saloons and burn the whole kit ‘n’
caboodle to the ground. The whole damn