Staring Down the Devil (A Lou Prophet Western #5) Read Online Free Page A

mud.
    Prophet frowned at the man on the lead horse. In the darkness
compromised by only the buttery glow from saloon windows, he
couldn’t see the man’s face, but something about the man — the set
of his narrow shoulders and the way his hands gripped the bridle
reins, chin in the air — looked familiar.
    “Well,
I’ll be goddamned,” Prophet said aloud to himself, his face
cracking a grin. “That ain’t no man at all!” Stepping off the
boardwalk as the rider approached, he yelled, “Hey, you there!
Where the hell you think you’re goin’?”
    Faster
than Prophet could blink, the rider brought her horse to a halt and
clawed her six-gun from her holster. Thumbing back the hammer, she
brought the revolver to bear on the bounty hunter, aiming down the
bore with one eye squinted. “Wherever I please, sir, and what are
you going to do about it?”
    Prophet lifted his hands and bottle above his head, and
grinned. “Don’t shoot, Louisa. It’s Lou.”
    The
girl frowned and leaned forward, her blond hair falling across her
shoulders. She wore a man’s flannel shirt, sheepskin vest, tight
jeans, and plainsman hat thonged beneath her chin. They were a
man’s clothes, all right, but the slender curves and high bosom
were all woman. Or those of a well-built eighteen-year-old
girl.
    She
was close enough that Prophet could see her gazing at him,
surprised. “Lou?”
    “In
the flesh, little darlin’,” Prophet said with a chuckle, dropping
his arms. “What in the hell brings you to Denver?”
    “Lou!”
the girl cried, depressing the hammer of her six-gun and sliding
the pistol back in her holster. “I didn’t recognize you in that
suit.”
    Quickly she slipped out of her saddle, dropped her reins, and
ran to Prophet, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face
in his chest. Her hat slid off her head and hung down her back by
the thong. “Oh, Lou, it is you!”
    Prophet hugged her. “Sure is good to see you again, girl. Yes,
siree . . . mighty fine. I been worried ever since we split up back
in Nebraska.” He looked at the horses strung out behind her black
Morgan, all tied tail-to-tail. “But I guess I don’t have to ask you
what you’ve been up to.”
    She
pulled away from him and followed his gaze to the dead men on the
horses. “That’s the Kelly Gang,” she said, her sonorous
schoolgirl’s voice turning hard. “Or what’s left of them. They held
up a stage near Cheyenne. They massacred all the passengers,
including the father of five children and a mother of two. I
tracked them to just north of Denver, caught them all bathing in
Stony Butte Creek.”
    “They
decided not to come peaceful, I take it.”
    Louisa
Bonaventure, whom Prophet had once dubbed the Vengeance Queen on
account of her quest for the gang that had murdered her family,
shook her head. “I couldn’t convince them I was serious, in spite
of the fact I had my Winchester on them and they were all standing
naked as jaybirds in the water. They just laughed and went for the
guns they’d left on the bank.” She shook her head as she regarded
the dead men thoughtfully. “It was just like shooting ducks on a
millpond.”
    Prophet chuckled at the girl. She had the angelic face and
countenance of a pious farmer’s daughter from Nebraska, which she
was. Circumstances, however, had turned her into an improbably
formidable manhunter. The combination, wrapped as it was in such an
attractive package, was astounding and not a little discomfiting.
To their everlasting regret, hardcases didn’t take her
seriously.
    “Law,
Miss Bonnyventure,” he said, “you are a caution!”
    “Someone needs to rid the earth of evil men as these,” she
said, suddenly pensive as she studied the bodies draped over the
horses. “You can’t do it all yourself, Lou.”
    “No, I
reckon not,” Prophet allowed. “Where you headin’ now?”
    “I was
looking for a place to keep these men until the sheriff’s office
opens in the morning and I can