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

for the hangman.’ Prophet was seething, and he had to
try with all his might not to drill a slug through the man’s skull
and leave him here for the hawks. ‘Get up.’
    ‘ Sheriff? What sheriff? I didn’t do nothin’.’
    ‘ Get
up!’
    ‘ Can’t
you see I’m—?’
    ‘ If
you’re not standing in three seconds, I’m sending you to the
smokin’ gates.’
    ‘ All
right, all right,’ the man said with a sigh. ‘But I’m tellin’ you,
Mister—you’re makin’ a mistake.’ Painfully, without Prophet’s help,
the man donned his hat and gained his feet. ‘I don’t know what you
think I did, but I’m innocent as the baby Jesus.’
    Prophet went around behind the man and
patted him down, finding a knife in a sheath down his back and a
hideout gun in the well of his left boot. He also found three new
gold watches in his jeans pockets, a new pocket knife, and several
shiny trinkets.
    ‘ Innocent as baby Jesus, eh?’ Prophet chuffed. ‘Move!’ he
ordered, pushing the man toward his horse.
    The dapple-gray was unsaddled,
so Prophet tacked it up while the man watched with an angry sneer
on his pain-ravaged face. He was slick with sweat, and Prophet
didn ’t doubt
an infection had set in. He had a mind to put him out of his misery
and leave him here, but a coldblooded killer the bounty hunter was
not.
    When Prophet had the man on his horse, he
tied his wrists to his saddle horn and bound his feet to his
stirrups. He led the dapple-gray back to Mean and Ugly, who
nickered at the strangers and lifted his tail aggressively at the
dapple-gray.
    ‘ Friendly horse you have there,’ the outlaw
remarked.
    ‘ Ain’t
he?’ Prophet said, yanking the line-back’s head away from the
dapple-gray’s ass, and mounting up.
    Trailing the outlaw, who grunted and groaned
in pain, his head either sagging to his chest or tipped back on his
shoulders, Prophet tracked the main group along the river. He had a
feeling they were headed the same place he was headed—the little
town of Wahpeton, which sat at the point where the Ottertail and
Bois de Sioux rivers converged to form the Red on the Dakota line,
about ten or fifteen miles away.
    If that ’s where they were headed—and there
wasn’t much else to head for out here—they and Prophet would be
meeting real soon.

Chapter Six
    THE HONEY-HAIRED BLONDE rode a sleek black
Morgan horse, as fine in head as a Swiss mantle clock, as deep in
barrel and haunch as a mountain grizzly. She walked the
well-trained mount across the wood bridge, traversing the
diminutive Rabbit River, and kicked him into a canter, then a
gallop. When the town came into sight around a bend in the muddy
wagon trail, she slowed the frisky Morgan back down to a trot.
    As she passed the post with a
crudely painted sign with the word Campbell painted in green letters, she turned her
head from side to side, noting the handful of modest frame
buildings lining the recently graded railroad bed.
    There were no tracks in the grade yet, but
the girl had heard that the St. Paul & Pacific would be laying
rails through these parts before the summer was out, connecting the
Red River Valley with Minneapolis and Chicago and other points
east.
    Why anyone would care that this
backwater hole in hell was connected to anything, the girl had no
idea. But then, she didn ’t care, either. She didn’t care about much of
anything at the moment but the four horses tethered to the hitch
rack before a two-story building sitting between the brick depot
and the post office, with enough space on each side for one or two
more stores.
    The sign over the
building ’s
veranda announced the Philadelphia hotel, and she thought the name mighty uppity for
such a humble pile of boards. Stopping her Morgan about fifty yards
before the white-painted building, she gave it a close study,
ignoring the subtly fearful tap of her pulse in her wrists and
neck, the cool-warmth of apprehension creeping up the backs of her
thighs.
    If anyone had been