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

and the wagon had been honeycombed with lead, the two horses
killed and lying in the traces, in pools of their own viscera.
    Prophet grabbed the
woman ’s arm
and led her up on the boardwalk—Mrs. Arnie Beckett, widowed in an
eye blink.
    ‘ Take
her home and call the undertaker,’ Prophet told one of the men
who’d gathered at the wagon, looking as jittery as raw recruits in
the aftermath of their first battle.
    Unsteadily, the man led the crying woman
off.
    Prophet walked around the dead horses toward
the mercantile. When he got there, he stopped before the woman
lying slumped on the steps and checked her pulse. It was an
instinctive move running contrary to logic, for the small, neat
hole dripping blood between her eyes told him she was dead.
    He mounted the steps and went
inside to see who else had been the victims of the
gang ’s
violence. Inside the door, he stopped and looked around at the
aisles of clothes and other dry goods, at the upended barrels of
flour and nails and scattered displays of soaps and smoking pipes
and chewing tobaccos. Nearly all the candy barrels and bins had
been upended as well, the rock candy and licorice and jawbreakers
scattered about the floor.
    A guttural groan lifted from the back of the
store, toward the counter, and Prophet moved toward it. Down the
aisle he saw a man in a bloody apron sitting with his back to the
counter. A tall, lanky man with short, black hair pomaded to his
scalp and parted in the middle, he held his hands across his belly.
Prophet winced when he saw that the man was literally holding his
guts in his hands.
    ‘ Jesus
Christ!’ Prophet sputtered, kneeling before the man. Hearing
someone mounting the steps, he turned and yelled through the door,
‘Someone get a sawbones— quick!’
    He turned back to the wounded mercantile
proprietor, who was shaking his head. His eyes were vacant and
glassy. Blood bubbled from his mouth.
    ‘ No
... use,’ he rasped. ‘I’m a ... goner.’
    ‘ Hold
on, buddy,’ Prophet said, squeezing the man’s shoulder. But he knew
the man was right. Back during the Little Misunderstanding, he’d
seen similar wounds. They were as deadly as they were painful, and
this man didn’t have a chance.
    ‘ My
wife?’ the man said. His chin was dipped to his chest.
    Prophet hesitated. ‘Fit as a
fiddle.’
    The man gave a halfhearted
chuff, reading the lie. That ’s . .. that’s . .. what I...
f-figured.’
    The man paused as if to
conserve his strength. He took a rattling breath and said, ‘D-daughter?’
    The daughter was apparently the blond girl
the lead rider had ridden away with, thrown callously over his
saddle and screaming for her life.
    ‘ I’m
gonna get her back for you,’ Prophet said. His jaw was set hard as
he stared down at the dying man, his heart breaking for all the
hell that had happened here ... for what? There couldn’t have been
more than fifty or sixty dollars in the cash drawer.
    Now the decent old sheriff was
dead, along with most of a family. Who knew how many those human
blowflies had left dead or injured up the street, before they’d
finished their raid.
    The dying man moved his hand to
Prophet ’s
and squeezed his wrist. It wasn’t much of a squeeze, but Prophet
could tell the man had something important on his mind. ‘Get... get
her back ... for me. P-please.’
    Prophet squeezed back. ‘I will. You can
count on that.’
    Then the man ’s hand slid away from
Prophet’s wrist, and slowly, as though he were drifting to sleep,
he slumped sideways to the floor and lay still.
    Prophet stood and turned toward the front of
the store, where several townsmen had gathered in the aisle,
looking shocked and wary.
    ‘ Ole
Hank,’ one of them said slowly. ‘He dead?’
    ‘ He’s
dead,’ Prophet said, brushing past the townsmen and heading for the
door. When he got there, he pushed through the screen, descended
the steps past the dead woman, and headed for the boarding house,
moving quickly.
    He ’d get