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

his guns and his possibles and
be on the trail in a half hour. Then he’d hunt those renegades and
turn them toe down hard—with not a scrap of mercy and no concern
for monetary reward—if he had to ride all the way to hell and
thrash the devil with a stick to do it.

Chapter Five
    ‘ SHIT!’
    Prophet reined Mean and Ugly to
a halt in a cottonwood copse along the grassy, southern bank of the
Otter-tail River. The sun was going down, but making the sky even
darker was a plum-colored storm curtain beating in from the
west.
    The curtain was streaked with pearl rain.
From the size of the cloud topping the storm, it was a mean one,
too, and would no doubt obliterate the tracks of the men Prophet
was following, had been following for the past hour and a half,
since leaving Luther Falls in a wind-splitting gallop.
    ‘ Lou,
you be careful,’ Cordelia had admonished him from her front porch
as he’d sprinted off down the street toward the livery, saddlebags
over his shoulder. ‘That’s the Red River Gang!’
    He hadn ’t had time to go back and have her
fill him in on just who in hell the Red River Gang was, but the
tall Scandinavian who ran the livery barn had given him the quick
lowdown while saddling his horse. Turned out the Red River Gang was
a group of renegades led by Handsome Dave Duvall and Dayton
Flowers—both murdering outlaws whom Prophet had heard of down in
the Indian Nations. Wanted by federal marshals out of Fort Smith,
they’d fled the southern plains to the north, where they’d been
running hog-wild for the past six months, raiding settlements up
and down the Red River between Wahpeton and Grand Forks in eastern
Dakota Territory.
    ‘ They
always raided more into Dakota than Minnesota,’ the liveryman had
groused as he cinched Prophet’s saddle. ‘No one ever expected ‘em
to show their ugly souls in Luther Falls. I mean, there ain’t
nothin’ here worth thievin’!’
    Well they had a girl and some
candy and the satisfaction of having turned a quiet little town
upside down, and that ’s probably a good day’s work for that bunch,
Prophet thought now, as he sat watching the storm growing on the
horizon.
    ‘ Shit!’ he repeated, knowing he was going to have to seek
shelter soon, probably throw a lean-to together to keep from
getting soaked.
    He looked westward, the
direction the gang ’s tracks led. It was a vast, flat, brown prairie out
there, relatively featureless but for the Ottertail River twisting
through, sheathed in high brush and cottonwoods. The gang was
following the river toward the Dakota border, and Prophet figured
they’d hole up, too, probably in a bend much like the one Prophet
sat along now, cursing the weather and the lateness of the
hour.
    If he stopped now, he
wouldn ’t be
able to get started again till the morning. No point tracking those
men in the dark and risk losing their trail—a trail that would
prove hard enough to follow after that squall hit.
    He turned his horse back into
the trees, dismounted, and stripped the gear off Mean and Ugly, and
hobbled him. There was plenty of tall grass around, and the
river offered water, so he knew the horse wouldn’t wander far. It
was starting to rain, and the wind was kicking up by the time he’d
rigged a lean-to with the tarpaulin in which he’d wrapped his
bedroll. He’d chosen a campsite in a slight hollow with a big,
uprooted cottonwood along one side, and the shelter kept him from
getting soaked, although wind prevented him from building a
fire.
    Fortunately, the heaviest wind
lasted only ten minutes or so. When it had tapered off, Prophet
went out in the spitting rain to gather dry wood, returning with
several small branches that had been sheltered by heavier limbs. He
piled the wood outside the lean-to, then carved out a small hole in
the center of the shelter, surrounded it with rocks he gathered
from the riverbank, and built a fire.
    He didn ’t dally in starting a pot of coffee
heating, with which he’d try to