nearest ravine and neither I nor anyone else would have known what happened to you.â
Prophet leaned down to scoop his hat from a weed tuft. He dusted it off and set it on his head, glancing around at the dead men and Mrs. Sanderson already attracting flies. Horton Whippleâs bowie knife glistened in the sun near his left shoulder, beneath which blood from his ruined head was puddling and congealing.
âI had a chance.â Absently rubbing his neck, Prophet turned back to Louisa. His chagrin pained him worse than the groining heâd taken from Horton Whipple. Not only had he let an old woman sneak up on him from behind, but a young oneâone whoâd been bounty hunting fewer years than Prophet had been wearing the same longhandlesâhad had to save his ass. âWhere in the hell did you come from, anyway? I thought you were up north.â
Theyâd met a couple of years ago, when Louisa, only seventeen at the time, had taken off after the bunch that had burned her Nebraska farmstead and murdered her family. She and Prophet had hunted the kill-crazy renegades led by Handsome Dave Duvall from Minnesota to northern Dakota Territory, and together theyâd sent each man to the spirits in a haze of gun smoke and dust.
Prophet had figured that Duvallâs demise would mark the end of Louisaâs vengeance trail. But long after Duvall and his gang were moldering in their graves, she, in the grip of some curious obsession for righting the worldâs wrongs and evening up the odds for those who couldnât do it themselves, had continued ghosting the outlaw trail, collecting bounties not so much for the money but to finance her continued tracking.
Louisa specialized in stalking men who killed or injured women or children, but she didnât discriminate. Any outlaw was fair game, and she wasnât on any manâs trail long before the poor bastard was soiling his trousers and begging for mercy.
But when it came to killers and renegades, Louisa showed no mercy.
She and Prophet worked together only occasionally. But being too stubborn to stand each other for long, they spent more time apart than together. Otherwise, theyâd have spent more time arguing than bounty tracking.
Besidesâthough neither had made a formal declarationâthey were in love with each other, and love had no place in the bounty hunting business.
âYou carve a wide swath, Lou,â Louisa said, sliding the Sharps into her saddle boot. âI accidentally cut your trail in Denver where I ran into your old pal Hooch Mullaney, who said that when youâd finally gotten out of the local lockup for busting up the Drovers Saloon and Pleasure Parlor during a typical inebriated brawl, you headed south for the winter. In Pueblo I learned from a deputy sheriff that youâd gotten word a gang of stage robbers was running sharp-horned and high-tailed through the country north of Durango, and you intended to collect the bounty to fuel your winterâa winter that you no doubt intend to spend in the arms of some dark-skinned harlot in some rank perdition south of the border.â
Prophet grinned up at her. âWhy, you been followinâ me. Needinâ a real man to curl your toes, are ya?â
Louisa blinked coolly, but her smooth-skinned cheeks flushed ever so slightly. âHardly. And Iâd rather follow a bobcat into a rattlesnake den. It just so happens our trails crossed several times below DenverâI, too, am headed southâand I had a premonition you were about to get yourself into hotter water than even you were accustomed to.â She raked her haughty, self-satisfied gaze around the bodies of the dead Sanderson bunch, as if to prove the validity of her portent. âI cut Mean and Uglyâs trail yesterday. Who woundnât recognize that scrub horseâs shabble-footed, knock-kneed gait?â
âJesus Christ, now sheâs insultinâ my horse.â
As
Nathan Shumate (Editor)
Alexia Stark
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William Mitchell
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The Scoundrel
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