‘OH, NO! OH. God! For the love of the crown, help me! Help us all! We’re going to perish, certainly!’
With her hands tied behind her and her ankles tied before her in the bouncing wagon box, Louisa turned to the woman who’d been yelling and sobbing off and on since they’d been taken from the train a good half hour before.
‘Be quiet,’ Louisa warned the duchess. ‘You’re giving me a headache.’
‘Ohhhhh!’ the duchess sobbed, her head between her upraised knees.
She was tied as Louisa was, and, like Louisa, sat with her back against the driver’s box, facing the wagon’s rear. With her rich, brown tresses hanging down from the once-taut coils piled atop her aristocratic head, and her blue silk gown torn and soiled, she didn’t look much like a duchess anymore.
She lifted her head, turning to Louisa with her tear-streaked face beseechingly. ‘I’m going to die! Don’t you see? They’re going to kill us all, and I’ll never see my dukey or little Timmy or Mum or Poppa or Gran—ever again! Ev-er!’
‘Don’t worry. They’re not gonna kill us for a while yet,’ Louisa said under her breath, regarding the dull-eyed men plodding along behind the wagon. ‘They’re gonna have plenty of fun with us first—you can bet the pot on that.’
‘Ohhhhh!’
Louisa’s flip tone belied her fear, the shudders that leapfrogged her spine every two minutes or so. Her hands and feet were bound, and she was in the firm, deadly grasp of the gang who’d murdered and ravaged her family. They were all about her, in fact—Handsome Dave Duvall and Dayton Flowers included, heading up the pack before the wagon.
What, oh what, had ever made her board that train!
Louisa turned her head away from the shrieking duchess, and saw the other woman the gang had kidnapped, sitting on Louisa’s left. Slightly younger than the duchess—probably Louisa’s age—the young woman had passed out again, and her head lolled back on her shoulders. Little ringlets of flaxen-blond hair hung to her small, powder-white breasts only partially concealed by her dainty pink gown. Her delicate, small-boned face was drawn and pale and dust-layered, and her fine jaw bounced slightly with the wagon.
Louisa was glad the girl was unconscious. She couldn’t have endured the screams of both women at once.
Looking around again, Louisa regarded the dusty riders surrounding the wagon—a hawkish, mean, ugly, unshaven lot of gun toughs. The Red River Gang they were, and this was the first time Louisa had seen them all together up close.
They rode their saddles with lazy arrogance, slouching, smoking, and squinting against the dust and the westering sun, confident in their villainy. It was their aim, Louisa knew from what she’d overheard in their conversation with the duke earlier, to hold the duchess for ransom, until the duke could come up with fifty thousand dollars.
Where and when the duke was supposed to make the drop, Louisa hadn’t heard; she’d been too far from the men and still woozy from the braining she’d taken when the train had stopped so suddenly following the explosion that had ripped up the rails.
The part about the drop didn’t matter, anyway. Louisa knew that either she or the Red River Gang would be turned toe down long before any of that occurred. She still had her gun under her skirt, as well as her knife. None of the gang members had thought to check the pretty little girl with the honey-blond hair for hideout weapons. As soon as one or more of them tried to ravage her as they’d ravaged her mother and sisters, Louisa would make them damn sorry they hadn’t been more cautious.
She turned to her left and saw that one of the dust-soaked riders was staring at her, a lewd light in his eyes.
‘What are you looking at?’ she asked him haughtily, covering her fear with a taut upper lip.
‘You, sweet girl.’
‘You’re not my type, sir, nor me yours.’
To the man riding beside him, he said, ‘This one here’s not only perty, but she’s got spunk. Did you hear how she said that?’ The man lifted his chin and scrunched his eyes. ‘‘You’re not my type, sir, nor me yours.’’ He slapped his thigh and guffawed.
‘Yeah, I saw. I like the duchess, myself. I don’t know why we took this one when we had all those rich Englishers to choose from.’
‘‘Cause this one was pertier than them Englishers, and cause she tried to knock Dayton’s block off when he grabbed her out o’ that car. Ha! Ha! How could anyone resist a girl like that!’
‘I like the duchess myself,’ the second man repeated, wiping his mouth with his shirt cuff. He looked at the girl to Louisa’s left. ‘And this girl here—her titties are about to jiggle out of that little dress she’s wearin’—like little white pears!’
‘What the hell are you two doin’?’ Handsome Dave Duvall asked, slowing his horse to let the wagon catch up to him. When he was riding even with the box, between the other two gang members, he said, ‘I told you boys to leave these girls alone.’
‘Ah, come on, Dave,’ the first man said. ‘We’re just lookin’! Besides that, I don’t see no harm in havin’ some fun.’
‘If I turned you boys loose on these women now, they’d be dead before nightfall. Besides that, I don’t want any of you ever touching the duchess, understand? Her husband ain’t gonna pay the ransom to get her back if she’s defiled.’
‘Okay, Dave,’ the second man said. ‘But what about these other two? I mean, we brought them along for the fun of it, didn’t we?’
‘That’s right, Grogan,’ Duvall said with a grin. ‘And you can have all the fun you want with ‘em tonight, after we reach the cabins. In the meantime, we’re gonna ride like hell, understand?’
‘You think someone’s followin’ us, Dave?’
‘Doubt it, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry, now isn’t it, Chess?’
‘I reckon,’ Chess allowed.
Duvall gave the two men a wink and turned to Louisa with a thoughtful frown. ‘Who in the hell are you, anyway, honey? What were you doin’ on that train with all those uppity Englishers?’
Thinking fast, Louisa said, ‘I... I was hired to help the cook. You know, to peel potatoes and serve coffee and such. Please, mister, won’t you let me go?’ She lowered her head and feigned a sob, not a difficult job under the circumstances. ‘I’m so frightened.’
Duvall sidled his horse to the wagon, nudging Grogan out of his way. Keeping pace with the bouncing contraption, he smiled lustily at Louisa, reached down, and took her chin in his hand. He baldly appraised the two bulges in her tunic, then stared into her eyes, grinning with only his mouth. His gaze was dark, his cheeks coloring slightly. A wintery chill sent a shiver the length of her body. The duchess leapt into another crying jag, and Duvall, wincing at the ear-piercing shrieks, straightened in his saddle and galloped back up to the front of the pack.
Grogan snickered and turned to Louisa. ‘Just better hope he don’t go for your toes, Miss—that’s all I got to say!’
Grogan elbowed the man called Chess, adding, ‘Poor Cora Ames. Ha! That poor woman’s gonna be walkin’ with a limp till the day she meets St. Pete. Ha! Ha!’
He and Chess shared another round of laughter, then gradually turned their attention to cigarette-building. When they’d drifted off, Louisa looked behind her and over the riders following the wagon. She hoped she’d see a sign of Prophet back there, but all she saw was more of this godforsaken prairie, creased here and there with shallow ravines and studded with occasional cottonwoods.
Had the bounty hunter found her horse at the train station in Fargo, and realized her ploy? She didn’t know. Even if he had found the horse, it didn’t mean he’d guessed she’d hopped the duke’s train. But she hoped so. If not, she was all alone out here, with only the single Colt on her hip and the bowie knife on her belt—against twelve of the owliest-looking savages she’d ever laid eyes on.
And then there was Handsome Dave Duvall, as square-jawed handsome as he was evil.
The hell of it was, she didn’t think she’d have done such a thing unless she’d known she had Prophet to back her up. Maybe she’d been better off back when she was depending only on herself....
Maybe it was better if she always just rode alone.. . .
One thing she knew for sure, though—if she was going under the green, she was damn sure going to take a handful of the Red River Gang with her.
She rested her head on her knees and tried squirming into a more comfortable position. But there was no such thing as comfortable when your wrists were tied behind your back, your ankles were tied before you, and you were riding a wagon straight to hell....