Read Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) for Free Online Page A

Luther Falls could not have been lost on Sheriff Beckett,
whom Prophet watched creep to the side of a buckboard wagon parked
before the butcher shop, about a half block away from the
mercantile. Old Beckett laid the barrel of his barn blaster over
the side of the wagon box, taking aim.
    ‘ Don’t
do it, Beckett,’ Prophet thought, warning bells tolling in his
head. ‘There’s a dozen of them, and you’ve only got the two loads
in that farm gun.’
    Prophet looked around for a gun, but no one
was wearing one.
    More whooping and gunfire
erupted from the men before the mercantile, drawing
Prophet ’s
frantic gaze. They were all mounted now, and starting down the
street, heading his way. They fired at windows and shingles as they
rode, whooping and hollering like mad spirits released from hell,
the hooves of their horses pounding the hard-packed
street.
    Prophet shot a glance at
Beckett, taking aim across the side of the wagon. ‘Don’t do it,
Sheriff!’ Prophet shouted.
    It was too late.
    He heard, ‘Stop! Sheriff!’ and then the
roar of the shotgun. It brought the firebrands to a skidding halt.
Turning their horses toward the wagon, they opened fire, smoke
puffing in huge clouds above their heads, the sound of their
mocking laughter mixing with the racketing of their six-shooters
and the confused whinnies of their horses.
    ‘ Well,
that does it,’ Prophet thought, the skin on his neck pricking in
earnest, lead filling his boots. ‘The crazy old coot’s
finished.’
    As the laughing men resumed
their course down the street, Prophet turned to the four
shopkeepers cowering a few feet away, behind water troughs and shipping
barrels. ‘Doesn’t anyone have a goddamn gun?’
    A little man with a big, waxed
mustache regarded him fearfully behind a stack of crates. ‘I got one
inside.’
    ‘ Get
it, goddamnit! Move!’ Prophet shouted.
    The man ran into his millinery
and was gone for what seemed like a long time as the firebrands
trotted their horses parade like down the street, shooting every window
they spotted and even killing several horses tied to hitch
racks.
    ‘ Hurry
up!’ Prophet shouted as the group passed.
    He turned around just as
the hat
maker reappeared, stooped and cowering, his face white, handing an
oily, lumpy rag to Prophet. Crouching behind a water trough,
Prophet opened the rag to find a Navy Conversion .36 with cracked
grips and a rusty barrel. He hefted the gun in his right hand, not
sure if the old cannon would blow his hand off but at the moment
not caring. He bounced up from behind the trough and ran into the
street as the procession made its way westward.
    ‘ Take
one from me, you goddamn scurvy swine!’ he shouted, thumbing back
the hammer, squeezing the trigger and feeling the old hog nearly
buck his hand off, springing his wrist.
    In spite of the pain, he loosed
two more shots before all the riders were out of range. So much
black powder hung before him that he couldn ’t see if he’d hit anything. One of
the riders at the end of the bunch turned in his saddle to return
fire at Prophet, but apparently thinking he wasn’t worth the
effort, he turned back around and followed the others out of
town.
    Silence fell as the thunder of the horses
receded in the distance. It was just as quickly shattered again as
a woman commenced screaming.
    ‘ Arnie! Oh, Arnie!’
    Prophet turned to his right and
saw a woman standing beside the wagon the sheriff had used for a
shield. She wore a gray gingham housedress, an apron, and a
lace-edged bonnet she must have thrown on in a hurry, for it was
untied.
    ‘ No!
Oh, Arnie!’
    Prophet headed that way, hoping
there was something he could do for the sheriff. It
didn ’t take
long to see there wasn’t.
    Beckett sat behind the left rear wheel of
the wagon, his back to an awning post. He could have been napping,
his chin on his chest, but for the four holes in his face, another
in his throat, and at last three more in his chest. He was a bloody
mess,