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

down the street toward the saloon.
    Halfway there, he caught a
whiff of something cooking, and followed the smell to a small,
tar-paper shack sitting on a weedy lot behind the general store,
flanked by stacked wood and a smokehouse. On a crude sign tacked
beside the door the word food had been painted in white letters. The place was
propped by logs about a foot off the ground, and out from under it
came a dog to bark at Prophet and sniff his clothes.
    Tripping over the dog, he made his way to
the door, pushed inside, and looked around at the three hand-hewn
tables and benches surrounding a smoky woodstove. In one corner, an
old man and an old woman worked on a plate of roast beef and mashed
potatoes with gravy, not saying a word and glancing up only briefly
at the stranger. Noting the shotgun, they quickly returned their
eyes to their tin plates, muttering in a foreign language.
    The meal Prophet was served turned out to be
as humble as the setting it was served in, and he left the place
fighting down the frothy acid bubbles rising in his chest.
Unsteadily, he made his way back to the main street and stopped on
the corner just east of the general store.
    The sun was nearly down, and
there was very little activity on the street. The only horses were
those of the Red River Gang, still tied to the hitch rack before
the saloon. The animals ’ heads hung sleepily.
    Glancing to his right, Prophet
saw that there was no light on in the sheriff ’s office, and he was grateful
for that. He hoped the sheriff and his deputy had gone home for the
evening. He didn’t want them getting in his way or fouling up his
plan to remove the girl from the rooms above the saloon. From the
fear he’d seen in their faces earlier, he didn’t think he had
anything to worry about.
    Now, little Miss Bonaventure
was another problem altogether. Not having seen her since
she ’d headed
for the room she’d wrangled from the woman who ran the general
store, he had no idea what she was up to. But sure as rabbits
hopped, you could bet she was up to something. He just hoped she
realized what a pit of perdition that saloon was tonight, and
stayed away from it. If she did not, she could tie Prophet’s plan
in one hell of a knot and probably get herself killed to
boot.
    The bounty hunter scanned the area around
him for several minutes, trying to spot a good location from which
to keep an eye on the saloon and to wait for a couple more hours to
pass. Finally, he headed for the alley paralleling the main street,
hung a right, and came up behind the general store.
    Seeing that the roof over the
store ’s rear
was fairly low, he used a couple of shipping barrels to help hoist
himself on it. Adjusting the shotgun hanging down his back, he made
his way toward the front, hoisting himself onto the store’s second
story, and hunkered down behind the false front, which jutted up a
good six feet and offered perfect cover from the saloon as well as
the quickening spring breeze.
    Standing, Prophet could peer
over the top of the facade at the saloon, from which tinny piano
music prattled above the Red River Gang’s raucous revelry. Bright lantern
light spilled onto the boardwalk and the heads of the horses
stationed there. Shadows flickered in the windows and occasionally
the sounds of breaking glass rose.
    One of the second-story rooms, whose windows
he could see from this angle, was lit, and he fairly shuddered as
he imagined what could be happening to the Luther Falls girl in
there.
    As the minutes passed, the laughter in the
saloon grew louder, the yells and shouts more and more boisterous.
Someone tried playing a banjo for a while, and gave up amidst a
barrage of wild complaints and several gunshots. At one point, a
girl screamed, and Prophet, who was sitting with his back to the
facade and smoking a quirley, jumped. But then the girl laughed
harshly, and he realized it was one of the whores.
    The minutes passed slowly. To
stretch his legs and stomp the chill from