Helldorado (31 page)

“Shut up.”

Prophet sighed and shook his head with futility.

“Let’s go back to Juniper,” Louisa said. “Get the town on its leash again, collect the bounties on those hard cases still skulking around. Then get the gold back in the bank. Hell, in one or two days we could make several thousand dollars, enough to get us through another Mexican winter if you keep the whoring down and don’t blow it all on cards and tequila.”

Prophet blinked at her. “Mexico?”

“I wouldn’t want to spend the winter in Canada.”

Prophet stared at her. He thought of Montoya, but something in the girl’s eyes—the bright, shiny confidence of the resolute huntress—told him she’d put the prison behind her.

“I ain’t never gonna see you in a church dress, am I?”

“What do you think?”

“Shit.”

Louisa turned her pinto around and spurred him into a ground-chewing gallop. She cast a devilish glance over her shoulder. “Race you back to Helldorado!”

“Ah, shit,” Prophet said again. He heeled Mean and Ugly up the trail, the eager horse lunging off its rear hooves and spraying gravel in his wake. “Here we go, Mean and Ugly!”

And for some reason, while he and the Mean and Ugly hammerhead raced up the trail behind Louisa, Prophet felt his spirits rise like spread wings, and he broke into loud, bellowing song: “Jeff Davis built a wagon, and on it put his name, and Beauregard was driver of Secession’s lovely frame!”

PETER BRANDVOLD was born and raised in North Dakota. Currently a full-time RVer, he writes Westerns under his own name as well as his pen name of Frank Leslie, as he travels around the West. Send him an e-mail at [email protected].